The Dark Avenger
by deathtoanarchy
Summary: After a monstrous storm ravages the mediterranean SHIELD sends in the Avengers, but an accident leading to the death of several agents leaves Natasha stranded in a frozen waste land fighting for her life. PERCY AND BLACK WIDOW PAIRING
1. Chapter 1

NEW CHAPTER ONE!

Fury stood over a monitor that, for the last three years, had been keeping tabs on a freak storm that had appeared over the Mediterranean Sea.

For three days it moved across the planet, leaving behind a trail of destruction modern society had never seen before. The destruction was barely comparable to storms like that of Katrina and Sandy, this storm was something else, something new. It was a storm that put fear into every single man woman and child who had the misfortune of knowing about it.

For three days the winds tore through buildings, rains fell in what felt like tropical downpours. From Greece to Antarctica the storm ended lives. It turned deserts into shallow seas and made canyons through bed rock. In that time the world was reshaped, maps ruined, and country's fell.

In that moment the world changed faster than it had ever done before. Tragedy became commonplace, alongside heart ache. The death of millions gave wealth to the wealthy and took more than just money from the poor.

But thankfully, after those three days of almost Armageddon, the storm settled down over the arctic, leaving behind its legacy of death.

But even there, away from civilization, away from the masses, it still killed. More than four dozen scientists had been trapped in their various research stations on the unclaimed continent, and all of the men and women had presumably died there, frozen to death in the extreme cold.

Trapped in the giant storm, they died one by one, isolated and without hope. Some tried to make it out before the storm hit, boarding a small fleet of ships, but even then few ever made it out from under those dark clouds.

Some of those scientists had been at the forefront of weather research; Nobel Prize winners, and mega geniuses working side by side to try and find a solution to global warming. They were humanity's best hope at surviving an environmental apocalypse, the brightest minds the world had ever seen and now... they were all dead.

Along with them was Fury's good friend and last living relative, Peter Lipins. Peter was the one to raise the man after his parents and sister were killed. He was the one to give the SHIELD agent the strong sense of justice that led him to where he was today. With his death, Fury broke. To have everyone you love taken away from you was something few could handle, even if you were used to it.

As Fury stood over that monitor looking at the dammed storm that took his uncle and killed so many, he couldn't help but feel thoughts of revenge worm their way into his head.

For too long their deaths had gone unpunished. The threat the storm held was forgotten in wake of events like the attack on New York. Left alone in some unused land the storm waited. But he knew soon it would move again. Like before, it would kill. Even if he had only speculation, Fury knew that something out there was controlling it, and whatever it was, it wouldn't survive.

Sitting around the massive meeting room table, the Avengers and the senior-most members of SHIELD waited for the last members to arrive. The only ones still missing were the playboy philanthropist and owner of stark industry's Anthony Howard Stark, and the operations director himself, Nickolas Fury.

Looking out the window, Bruce Banner couldn't stop a sigh from escaping his normally calm and collected exterior as he waited. The last year had been hard on everyone. So many friends from inside and outside the agency had died or been permanently injured in conflicts. Because of this, many countries, like the United States, held SHIELD responsible, and as a result the international agency had lost many of its resources and important backers, like the U.S.

In the last year SHIELD had gone from over one hundred thousand field and tech workers, to a skeleton crew of less than ten thousand. This in turn left the remaining members neck-deep in conflict with little or no help.

To only add to the problems that faced the agency, this lack of man power only served to increase the work load every member had to take on. As a result, some of the Avengers had even left, or had been killed in action.

The most notable of them had been Steve Rogers, who had left along with the United States backing months ago, and was now retired. It had been a depressing few years and they had been hard on the now fifty years old.

Bruce now had the stereotypical salt and pepper gray hair of a professor, just one of the many changes that had been brought about by the stress. From where he sat, the doctor could see most of London spread out below the skyscraper he now sat in. Big Ben and other well-known buildings could all be seen from his seat of over a hundred stories above the ground.

Great Britain was great and all, but it just couldn't compare to the U.S. Even with its, massive changes, America was still his home, and he missed home.

Like always when he thought of the U.S., his mind couldn't help but drift into thoughts of leaving SHIELD behind and getting back to his research. He had been contacted several times over the last year by the president himself, asking for him to come back and work for the government.

He would be lying if he said he wasn't tempted by the offer, with everything that had been going on in the last year just within the agency its self- with the discovery of the wide-spread corruption. The president's offer looked better and better with every day that passed.

Banner's thoughts were interrupted when the large oak doors at the far end of the room were thrown open without warning, and in walked Director Fury himself, with a dejected looking Stark fallowing close behind.

Without slowing his stride, Nick Fury spoke with a low and commanding voice while he crossed the room, not even bothering to wait for Tony to take his seat.

"Three years ago, minutes before the attack on New York, weather sensors around the world detected a massive storm forming over the Mediterranean; larger than the super storm Sandy and hurricane Katrina put together, along with class seven winds, massive earthquakes lit up sensors all over Greece.

"Ten thousand people died in the first hour alone, and bodies are still being found. The latest casualty count is in the millions, and with recent events being what they are, this has been the first time we have truly been able to study the storm, and we found some anomalies."

Even if Fury hadn't've been everyone's boss, there was just something about the man that demanded attention. It was the same intangible "thing" that made him one of the most intimidating people on the planet.

Because of this, all across the room men and women in black suits listened with rapt attention. They had all seen the news coverage on the storm, and many of them had lost someone, most had even been caught up in parts of the storm.

"The storm seemed to have been made out of an energy similar to that found in the interdimensional gate used by the Asgardians."

Not being able to keep quiet with this important revelation, Bruce interrupted the Director with a polite raise of his hand, "If this storm did all that you and the news reports say, then why haven't we been working on this sooner? Even if the recent events took away some of SHIELDs resources, you have dozens of government agencies from around the world that could help."

"For your information Banner," Fury replied with some animosity in his voice, something that shocked the kind doctor, "Recent failures by SHIELD have, in the international community, brought up the question of whether or not world powers like the United States should support the agency, and for now, most of them have withdrawn support. That includes sharing of research.

"In other words, we do not have the man power or the connections."

"What about privet agencies and companies, someone has to have looked into the storm?" Banner fired back without hesitation.

"Yes, most if not all groups worth any notice have looked in to the storm, several have even attempted to penetrate the outermost fringes of the storm with their newly developed tech… With varying results.

"The last count of sunken research ships was in the double digits. It's gotten so bad that the UN put a restriction on any travel in the area, but we are lucky enough to have Stark industries backing and they have been at the forfront of research on the matter.

"Now, if that will be all, I would like to get through the rest of the debriefing without any more interruptions."

The explanation sent Bruce back into his seat not having anything to say, the way Fury was speaking just then was almost condescending and sarcastic. In his personal dealings with Fury in the past, Fury had always given him respect, always listening to the doctor and his thoughts on subjects, even if they didn't fall under his expertise.

What made things even stranger, was that even though was the biggest name in radiation research, something the storm showed signs of, he had not been brought in on the matter and, for the most part, had been kept in the dark. Hell, he didn't even know that there was radiation in the storm.

Ignoring the look of surprise everyone in the room sent him at his dismissal of the doctor, Fury continued in an irritated voice, "It settled over Antarctica, where it destroyed all of the research outposts on the continent. But it, as we all know, stabilized there.

"The cause of the stabilization is still unknown, like most things concerning the storm, but it has been to the point where we would not have to worry about it. The storm wouldn't and hasn't gotten any bigger, and it looks as if it will not move. Currently the storm covers the entire continent. What has brought the attention of SHIELD back on the matter though, is disturbing."

Fury paused long enough to pull out a thick stack of papers, which he then tossed on the table. The, what could have been a novel, slammed into the table, making a loud slapping noise that brought some of the more easily distracted people back towards the subject.

"A recent study by a collection of well-known universities and their government counterparts, has shown substantial evidence that the storm is lowering global temperatures. While this may be good news for global warming, the evidence shows that this will continue at an exponential rate over the next few years.

"As of six hours ago, the storm has brought worldwide temperatures down to what they were just after the last ice age, and if we don't do something now, we will find ourselves in a new one."

All of the Avengers, and some of the more hardened agents, looked paler than normal. They knew that a lot of people would die, probably most of the people not living around the equator. On top of the freezing temperatures, there was a real probability of starvation, with most of the farmable land being covered in the snow and ice that came with an ice age.

"We have recently come into some new technology that will help us to penetrate the storm and keep agents alive for a prolonged period of time, three hours at the most.

"Our plan is to set up a base underground in the eye of the storm, where the winds and the temperatures are much more survivable. For this, we need a group of agents to be the first ones in the storm to start the equipment that will bore out the tunnels used for the base."

Three hours to build a base. That was all. Everyone who thought about joining the mission now had second thoughts. Almost as if he had sensed their unease, Fury continued.

"Because of the danger of this mission, I will not force any of you to do this, but we do need one of you to lead them. With tensions as they are in the international community, having a high ranking member lead the mission could help improve opinions on the agency."

Most of the agents in the room looked more apprehensive than usual. At this point, it was easy to see people like Tony trying to come up with an excuse to get out of this situation, the most likely reasoning behind it was that he didn't like the cold and did everything he could to avoid it.

The others, like , didn't have the sort of leadership experience required, and immediately took themselves out of the running. But before any of them could speak their thoughts, and more importantly excuses, a voice spoke out from the back of the room.

"Why not?" spoke the bored Russian, Natasha Romanova, getting to her feet. Agent Romanova was one of the most dangerous people on the planet, dressed in U.S. Marine issued pants and a form fitting black shirt, the twenty-five year old could kill with a brutality and grace that should have only been seen in movies. Being by far the youngest of the Avengers, Natasha was never one to mess around with.

She routinely took pot shots at Tony whenever he showed up in his iron man suit when it was not needed, in fact most of his suits had missing paint on the metal that Tony believed protected what were his greatest assets, one being his helmet and the other being...

Well, a little below the belt.

With a nod towards the red-head Fury continued, "With that decided, Stark will come along to monitor his equipment that we will be using. Everyone else is free to go about your business."

Without a backward glance, the red-head walked out the door to prepare for her latest mission, a mission that could turn out to be her last.

Forty thousand feet above Antarctica, the quinjet shook violently, jostling several of the agents around the sparse interior. After a few seconds the turbulence- caused by the sudden up thrusts in air currents, settled down enough for the agents to continue their last minute preparations for their mission.

Across the modified interior of the state of the art jet, men and women went over their packs one last time with quiet efficiency. Accompanying the sounds of the fast moving winds that shook the aircraft, was the quiet and meshed breathing of trained agents.

Each agent had their own ritual before a mission, weather it was rubbing a lucky coin or a favorite book, each person in the cargo hold was doing their best to take their mind off of the mission ahead.

Among them was Natasha Romanova. Sitting at the back of the plane, the young mission leader stared off into space. She wasn't lost in thought, the twenty something year old was in her pre-mission mode, it was an almost state of meditation where she didn't keep the thoughts that flared up every few seconds, but just let them pass, all the while keeping track of her surroundings.

In this state, the renowned spy could sit for hours catching every detail, while only seconds seemed to pass. It was her greatest weapon, it was the Black Widow's supper power, but it was ruined by the violent tossing and turning of the air craft. With every big jerk, her concentration was shattered, leaving her more irritated with every second that passed.

With Natasha's glare steadily getting worse by the second, the lead engineer got to his feet to outline the mission one last time in her stead. It was safe to say that the super spy didn't like public speaking, and had done as much as ambush the poor man in the hanger and demand that he do the pre-mission run through for her. The poor man was probably going to have nightmares.

"Good evening gentlemen, and lady," spoke the tall African American man with a slight Southern accent, his voice clear as day over the headphones everyone was wearing. "We are five minutes away from our drop point, so I'll get right to it. If this mission isn't a success, you will all die, plain and simple.

"We had an estimated three hours of battery life on each of our suits, which if we hurry should be enough to finish the basic building that will serve as our forward operation command post. With the winds as they are, as soon as we leave the plane, that's it, there's no turning back.

"No plane in existence will be able to pick us up until the storm either brakes apart, or we finish the tunnels that will lead out to the pacific."

The man looked each person in the eye, making sure that they understood, before getting the nod from Natasha to continue.

"You have all been briefed on your individual missions and what you need to do once we're down there, just remember we need everyone to make it. If not, we are all dead. Now, as for the landing, the winds down there are too strong for anything less than a meter to land in, but thanks to the wonderful people working at Stark Industries, we found a way around this problem."

Moving over to the hull of the plane, he smacked his hand hard on a metal cylinder, one of the many that stretched from floor to ceiling, "This right here is one of the drop pods we will be using tonight.

"One ton of shock absorbing titanium and carbon pistons, all wrapped up in a space age polymer that can take on any impact we can throw at it. It's rather simple really, you get in lock the door and well... drop forty- thousand feet to the ground. While you're dropping, hundreds of small air compressors and control explosions will direct you to the landing spot, but if you should be pushed into one of the faster traveling jets of air, you're dead anyway.

"To stop that from happening, we have sent in sensors and tracked the most dangerous currents and plotted a route to avoid them, the automated system will direct all the steering that's needed, all you have to do is hold on tight and enjoy the ride.

"Once there on the ground, the three hours you have to build and insulate SHIELD's newest base need to be spent wisely, we have no margin for error. If one person screws up, then we all freeze to death. Any questions?!" He yelled, increasing his volume to match that of the noise from outside.

But before anyone could answer, and without warning, another huge up thrust sent the quinjet spinning out of control. Agents who had unstrapped themselves to be able to get into their individual pods went flying around the interior, smashing into each other with enough force to break bone, and strip flesh.

Natasha wasn't spared, catching an elbow in the nose, which made her eyes water so she was unable to see what was to happen next. She flew across the cockpit, bouncing off several other members of the team, before slamming face-first into one of the closed drop pods. She was lucky not to have cracked her skull open with the speed she had been traveling at, although she did end up cutting open her forehead, which only blinded her further.

With another violent movement, an agent was sent tumbling into her, before disappearing into the mess that was the docking bay, no one in the air craft could tell what was going on, and with the speed some of them where traveling, someone was bound to be seriously hurt or even killed if things went on.

Even as she thought this, the red-headed spy felt her body go weightless as the plane suddenly plunged downwards. For several seconds, everyone just floated in the zero gravity of free fall, and then the constantly changing winds slammed forcefully on the bottom of the aircraft, sending everyone slamming back into the floor with the force of a car crash.

But it didn't stop for a full thirty seconds; men, women, and equipment were sent colliding together in the mosh pit that was the cargo hold. With every impact, Natasha felt less and less. Even as she fought to keep her eyes open, she was sent sliding across the floor before fetching up against an open drop pod.

Though her pain filled haze she reached out blindly, whether it was by blind luck or divine intervention her hand caught hold of one of the two handles that where on either side of the opening on the first try.

As the plane went into another weightless dive, Natasha blindly pulled herself up into her pod before strapping herself in, to prevent any more injuries. Even when she was in so much pain, her self-preservation won out. As soon as the last buckle snapped into place the automatic door slammed closed, and she was off, plummeting to the ground without any means of surviving, and only half concious.

NATASHA'S POV

I didn't remember much of the ride down, the only thing that I did remember clearly was the landing. It was loud and violent, and then… there was nothing. For the first few seconds, or even minutes, I couldn't tell, I fought my own body, trying to stay awake, but eventually the black haze that had threatened its way into my sight slowly receded, pushed back by will power and just plain stubbornness.

Everything was silent for a few seconds, as I looked around the interior of what, at that moment, felt like my coffin. There was nothing, just smooth brushed metal and the red glow of the emergency light. That is until the explosive bolts on the door went off, sending the pod door flying across the crater caused by my landing.

The explosive bolts where so powerful that the door was not only sent across the crater, but it even bounced off the ice once before disappearing into the white of the storm. For a second I was impressed, if not slightly entertained, but then reality set in.

The cold hit me, taking away my breath and leaving a trail of frost crystals rapidly forming on the walls of the pod. The speed at which this happened scared me enough that I was snapped out of my trance.

If the air in the pod could visibly freeze that fast, then I didn't want to wait for it to make its way to the harness and trap me in there. Hurriedly, but with as much dignity as possible (not much I'll admit it) I got out of my harness before it could freeze, and stumbled my way out into the storm.

"If I didn't hate the cold before this, then I'm definitly going to hate it after." I muttered to myself before moving off. 'The power of positive thinking.' Going off of my other positive thoughts of things like the beach and chocolate cake and Tony Stark falling down a well, I moved off blindly into the worst storm anyone has ever been in.

If I was going to survive, I needed to find shelter from the wind and the cold, something I didn't heave back at the pod, and I only had three hours to do so.

Now there's one thing you need to know about white-outs, you can't see anything. Normal white-outs kill people every year, people get turned around in the snow and the next thing you know they're found in the spring, half frozen and quite dead.

Those are normal storms, but this wasn't. The snow was thicker, the wind at ground level was as fast as any hurricane, and the further up you went the faster it got.

If you could see past the literal tons of snow flying through the air, you could have seen hundred foot tall drifts being built up and then torn down in seconds, miniature mountains of snow moved almost as if they were alive. It was this realization that stopped me from hunkering down and making a ice cave, I didn't have the desire to be buried alive, no thank you, so I moved on.

The wind was so strong that I couldn't even stand up straight, and had to almost crawl across the ice, and even then I would have been blown away it I hadn't have had the ice axes that where left in the pod. Along with the wind there was the cold. As everyone who was supposed to be on the mission was told, the air was colder than anything the world had seen in a very long time.

It was so cold that Stark had to make a special respirator that heated up the air so it wouldn't freeze my lungs in a single breath. Everything I was wearing was meant to combat the cold. Every single inch of my body was covered in thick cloths that where heated by a small series of thermocouple that ran down the spine of the inner jumpsuit.

For what felt like hours, I continued on, moving painfully slow through this comicon of an ecosystem (nothing but white). But as the time passed I could feel it; I could feel myself dying slowly. My vision tunneled until I could only see my feet, and even through the thick clothes that were made for this weather, I could still feel the heat slowly leaving my body.

Parts of my hands and feet had gone numb, and I had to focus just so I wouldn't fall over. I was beyond cold and far past shivering. Even as I kept moving, I knew things where bad. I had all of the signs of hypothermia, and if I didn't find shelter soon, things would only go downhill.

Moving forward, I started to feel numb towards the whole situation, it was almost as if I was seeing everything through someone else's eyes. At one point, I even tripped, and for a full five minutes sat there giggling about this small accident. It took all of my mental will power, but I pushed on, further and further I walked, little did I know that the three hours had long since passed and it was just my will that was keeping me alive.

Suddenly things changed, I felt myself falling down a steep incline, the air around me getting slowly darker as I fell further, in my cold induced haze, I recognized the feel of my back scraping against a rough wall of ice as I slid down.

After what felt like forever, my frozen brain worked up enough heat to make me realize what had happened. I had fallen into a crevasse, one of the most deadly hazards out in this icy wasteland. It was a giant crack in the ice that have been known to stretch for miles down.

It was a certain death sentence for one by themselves like I was. But I was lucky, instead of falling hundreds of feet straight down and dying on impact or getting stuck half way down as the crack thinned, I was going to die at the bottom stuck and alone.

After all my years of living in the most dangerous places on the planet, killing high-ranking officials -and so many others- fighting threats to not only the United States, but also the world. I would die. It would all end just because of one stupid crack in the ground. It was almost funny. Smiling faintly, I closed my eyes for what would be the last time, after so many years of fighting if felt nice to let go.

DON'T FORGET TO FAVORATE AND FOLLOW AND PLEASE PLEASE REMEMBER TO REVIEW FOR EVERY CHAPTER


	2. Chapter 2

The Norse were right in saying Hell is cold, because that was what the bottom of the crevice was- Hell. Somehow, Natasha had survived the fall to the bottom of the South Pole; the gravel under her feet was proof of that. For thousands of years nothing living had set foot down here, but now here she was, miles under the ice and snow in perpetual darkness. Where no human had ever stepped.

The only thing lighting the way was the flashlight on her gun, but even that was turned down. She was afraid that if she let the battery burn out, she would die in the dark; an old fear of hers.

Natasha had woken up less than an hour ago at the bottom of a natural ice-slide- one that led up further than the eye could see. Somehow, she had survived the fall, missing the car sized chunks of ice that littered the floor of the cavern; hard as steel, they would have turned her body into a smear. A thought that sent a shiver up her back and several minutes of silent prayer to whatever higher being kept her alive. She had not only survived the fall, but also managed to keep all of her equipment with her.

Natasha wasn't oblivious to the fact that the fall had probably saved her life. If she had stayed up top, she would be dead by now; frozen along with any survivors of the crash. But down under the ice, beneath thousands of feet of insulation, the temperature was a bearable negative forty degrees Celsius. So, being unable to see the top of the ice, she started to walk.

Miles passed by without her noticing any changes besides in the walls. Walls that had started out stretching far above her head had turned into tunnels barely six feet high. The tunnel walls were perfectly circular and seemed to go as straight as an arrow with no hint of changing direction. From where she had dropped down into this underground passage, the natural pressure of thousands of tons of ice had shorn the frozen water and, taking the path of least resistance, had broken through the top of the tunnel and onto the bedrock floor.

They were not natural.

Whatever had caused the storm up above could have made these tunnels to travel, but she had yet to find anything that proved this. However, that didn't stop her from glancing over her shoulder every few minutes. The spy just couldn't shake the feeling that someone or something was watching her, and if there was one thing she had learned in her time with SHIELD, it was that you should always trust your instincts.

But at one point, her concentration wavered and she found herself lost in her thought, how would she make it out of this? Even if these tunnels lead anywhere, did she really want to find out where? "Dammit!" She practically hissed out, "Why am I the one who always ends up in these kinds of messes? You never see Clint strapped to a chair while fifty-year-old perverted politicians stand over him with baby oil." She couldn't help but shudder at the, what she thought was repressed, memory. She was just glad the parking garage collapsed, ending up killing the man, or she would have. Lost in the less than pleasant memory, she continued on through the tunnels, barely noticing in her irritated mood that the tunnel was starting to bend up ahead. What Natasha failed to notice though, was the shadow of a black hound that filled up the tunnel behind. Somehow the goliath of a dog snuck up on her without her noticing. It wasn't until it was almost too late that the spy threw a quick glance over her shoulder and spotted the threat.

With a snarl the dog lunged forward, but in its haste its back paws slipped on the smooth ice, making it lose much of its power, so instead of landing behind Natasha as it meant to, and ripping her into pieces with its powerful jaws, it landed ten feet away, stumbling to regain its footing.

This mistake gave the agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. time to twist fully around, aim, and fire. All three bullets that barked out of the barrel of her gun passed clean through the monster's head in rapid succession, and for a second Natasha was proud of herself. It wasn't every day that she could fire with that speed while in the position she was in. But her brief moment of celebration was ruined as she realized that the bullets didn't seem to harm the monster in the least. The black hound just kept moving, even with several ounces of hot lead having just passed through its brain. So the battle hardened woman did the only thing she could do… she ran.

The crampons that were strapped to her feet gave her more traction than her opponent, the metal spikes tore into the ice, giving the agent the upper hand over the stumbling dog, but the creature soon caught up with her. Moving down the small tunnel with no were to run but forward, Natasha could do nothing as the heavy paw crashed into her side.

Anyone who has ever broken a bone knows that they broke it; flying through the air, she felt most of her ribs crack and shift dangerously as she was thrown out of a tunnel. She was lucky the dog hadn't hit her spine instead, or she would have been crippled.

It was only after she came to a rolling stop in a bank of snow, that the spy realized that she had been thrown into a huge chamber, filled with icy pillars and illuminated with a soft blue glow of light behind the ice.

It was probably one of the most beautiful places she had ever seen, but her battle hardened mind was not distracted from what was important

With a painful grunt, Natasha rolled over, against the odds her gun was still in her hand. As soon as the dog ran out of the tunnel she had been sent flying out of, bullets ripped their way into the ice at the feet of her assailant. For some reason, her bullets couldn't hurt his thing, but judging from its pained yelps, ice could. Ice splintered into its unprotected face.

Even with the cold splinters, it still kept coming, and Natasha's gun fell silent as she shot the last bullet.

For what felt like forever, she just stared at the black piece of metal and plastic in her hands, the one thing she always counted on had finally failed her. The gun wasn't out of bullets, she could tell that much at least. No, it had just stopped working, leaving her laying without any hope.

So she closed her eyes and laid there, waiting to die. But it never happened. Before the dog could kill her, an old man stepped in front of the charging monster and pointed what, she would later come to call a giant fork, at her adversary.

The pitchfork let out three beams of light that covered the distance to the hound in the blink of an eye, reducing it to a pile of ashes. If the man's sudden appearance was surprising, it was soon overshadowed by the ease at which he killed the hound. Turning to the injured girl, the man found his vision blocked by the barrel of an overly large gun. One that they both realized was broken.

NATASHA POV

I got my first real look at the face of my rescuer, and was surprised to see how old he looked. The man's face was covered with graying hair that once could have been black, coming down into a long unkempt beard, but had now turned into a dull gray that matched his lifeless eyes. Eyes that spoke of a hard life that had broken him.

With a small smile that revealed deep cut laugh lines, the man turned and walked away without saying a word. I just stood for a moment, before running after the old man, keeping my gun trained on him as I tried to keep up the façade of it still working...

He was no human, not considering the way he vaporized the dog.

He could be another Asgardian, or maybe some other alien. Whatever he was, he was the first sign of life I had found besides the dog since the crash, and judging by his actions he wasn't any threat to me, at least not yet.

At one point I lost the old man, him having passed around a corner and through an archway in one of the ice walls.

Going through the thick ice wall, I exited out into what could only be a man made room, and I could only stand in awe. I had passed through a small opening in the ice, something that was more of a crack and could have been missed by anyone who didn't know it was there, and now in front of me was the most amazing room I had ever seen, the icy walls were shaped like Greek columns spaced out evenly along the perimeter of the room, and the domed ceiling was carved into breath taking battle scenes of a man in armor fighting mythical monsters and wars. Each scene seemed to depict the man's life, from that of a child to a young adult.

Everything looked as if it was hundreds of years old, as if a group of ancient Greek explorers had been stranded here and spent their spare time recreating some sort of temple under the ice.

After several minutes of visually exploring the room, my eyes landed on the man who saved me. There, on a throne of ice off to the opposite side of the room from the hidden entrance. There the old man sat, not moving a muscle. His seat was simple and made of flat plains, probably extremely uncomfortable too, judging by the way he held himself there. Finally, siting in the center of the room like some holy object, was a massive shard of jagged ice tearing its way out of the smooth floor, as clear as glass it stood there and, in the center, was a man.

A man dressed like the warrior carved in the roof; covered in the same armor, and carrying the same sword. The man looked as if he had gone through some war centuries ago, frozen blood and ash covered the bronze armor, armor that was damaged in several places.

It was like some exhibit out of the history books, a warrior out of time waiting to be found.

My observations where cut short by the old man, "I am sorry for you being trapped down here," he spoke, "But there is little either of us can do about it, so you might as well sit down and put away that gun." At that, my look of wonder turned into my signature 'agent's face'; cold and devoid of emotion. I ignored his suggestion.

"What are you?" I demanded, without putting down my only defense; even though it didn't slow down the dog one bit, and probably would not work against him, "Are you an Asgardian?" I questioned after a moment of silence.

At that the man snorted "Me, one of those imposters? No. I am the real thing. I am a god, not some alien mistaken for one. I am Poseidon, Ruler of the Seas, Bringer of Storms, the Earthshaker! I am not one of those Norse pretenders, I am the real thing," He practically bellowed out. Apparently my questioning had led to a sore spot. He went on for several minutes after that, continuing to rant about how the gods didn't get respect in modern times, but thankfully he soon fell silent. After Poseidon's little rant, he looked apologetic, but still didn't say anything.

"Wait, you're the god of storms?" I began making the connection. "So-"

"No, I am not the one who made the storm," interrupted Poseidon, "It was my son," he continued, gesturing to the man in the ice, "He's the one who started it, and to answer your next question, he is the only one who can finish it."

"Well why won't he? Doesn't he know that this storm has and will kill millions?" I yelled in frustration.

"Yes he does!" yelled the god back, "But he doesn't care, everything he had in this world is gone, they are all dead! Everyone; his mom, his sister, all of his friends, they are all dead."

"Well, then tell him to suck it up!" I screamed, matching the god's volume, "This world is more than just him and the people around him! He doesn't need to be so selfish, he doesn't need to kill more families and friends!"

"He can't help it… nobody can." The god before me suddenly looked as if he had aged twenty years, falling back into his seat tiredly.

"What do you mean he can't help it? He can control his own actions can't he?"

"…. You don't understand, it's not his fault, it is mine. He… he is going through something that hasn't been seen for a thousand years. His human side, the part that makes him who he is, the part that keeps him stable, is broken. Because of this, he has lost all ties to your mortal world.

"The only emotion he feels now is anger, and that anger is fueled by his godly side. He isn't just using up his energy; he is tapping into his blood line. He is taking the power from me and, through me, the whole pantheon of Greek gods. That power is fueling the storm, and that power is what is slowly killing me."

I cautiously walked up to the sobbing god who, at this moment, was more human than anything, and placed a hand on his shoulder, albeit somewhat reluctantly. "Isn't there anything that can be done?" I asked softly. It was unnatural for me to try to help the man, but there was just something about him that screamed desperation, and it was because of this that I felt the need to console him.

For several minutes my question was met by the gods crying, before his shoulders suddenly stiffened under my hand and, for the first time, him his eyes had a sparkle of hope in them.

"There might be one," he said softly, almost to himself, before looking at his son, "But I would need your help, the help of a mortal."

"Well, what do I need to do?" I said, with a matching look on my face. If I could help save one person, it would be worth it.

He didn't talk for a long time after that, but when he finally did it was with an almost depressed voice. "You would need to be his anchor, his focal point…. Your minds would need to be brought together and your memories shared.

"It would create a bond; one that cannot easily be broken." He looked at me nervously for the next part, "All of your memories, the good and the bad, the painful and the embarrassing; would be shared.

"Your thoughts and the pain you felt would need to be relived again. It will be dangerous and, if not done properly, you would die and he would be free of his prison; free to kill and destroy before letting lose all of the energy he has taken."

For a long second no one spoke.

"What do I do?" I asked with conviction. I would do what needed to be done even if I died in the end, and when the god looked into my eyes he saw that. Yes, maybe I hadn't thought things through enough, but this was my life and to give it up so someone else didn't have to is all I ever needed.

Nodding his head, he continued, "In order for this to work you cannot be in contact with anything that has once been living, or touched by another living thing. That means no clothing, weapons, nothing. The energy would corrupt the binding and could kill you.

"Once that is done, you will need to be emerged in a substance that has never been touched by a living organism. Luckily for us there is one such place we can get that, and it is right here under the ice."

"H-hold on one second, nothing that's been touched by anything living a-are you saying that I need to…"

The sea god looked confused for a second before a look of understanding flashed across his face.

"You don't have to worry, I won't be there for the entire process, all I will do is take you to the location of the well and melt the ice. I can't be on the same continent once the process starts. If I was, my natural energies would disrupt the ritual and could lead to his escape.

"Me seeing you without clothes on should be the least of your worries. My son will see everything you have ever done and vice versa. He will, by the end, have lived your life exactly as you have as if it was his own."

Standing up, Poseidon led me through a tunnel that I had not seen when I came in. Less than a minute later, we came out into another, smaller, room. The floor, instead of being ice, was a rough stone. Ice crystals more than ten feet tall came from the surface, and at the center of what could have been Jack Frost's playground, was a small frozen pond that could have been no more than twenty feet across.

"The only untouched water on the planet," he said, "What you are standing on is a meteorite that fell to earth more than one hundred thousand years ago, formed in space and surrounded by super-heated air as it made its descent to earth, this water has never felt the touch of life.

"It is this water that makes me the god of the Seas," Lost in memory, he continued, "When I was young and my brothers and I had defeated our father, I saw this rock fall out of the sky.

"I followed it, and when I found it, I heard some voice speak to me, telling me to take a drink, so I did. I bent over and drank a small amount of the water. Water from another crater, one that had melted in the sun. It was that other worldly water that gave me my domain over the seas, and it is these special properties, the lack of anything living ever having touched it, that could make the plan work.

"There are places all around the world like this, where the gods received their powers; special places like Mt. Everest and Stonehenge. These places are what give us our power. Each one of the areas a god of the Greek pantheon received their godhood, was a place where the veins that carry the life-force of the world intersect. Places with more intersections make more powerful gods, and it is this power stores that my son is tapping.

"For the ritual, all I can do is melt the ice in the crater and around my son, you must do the rest. If it does work, the storm should disappear and your people can come and pick you up. But if it doesn't work… then we all die."

After nodding my head to signal that I was prepared to do this, the god disappeared in a golden flash, leaving behind a now melted pool of water, and a fully clothed and armored, comatose man on the floor.

It was now or never.

Letting out a breath that turned to frost in the cold air, I got to work.

Now the armor the son of the sea god was wearing was not easy to take off; it was bent out of shape in many places, and the places that weren't bent were almost melted together. It was so hard that I just ended up cutting the armor off of him, wishing for a can opener the entire time.

The whole time thinking of why it couldn't have been someone else in my position. Dammit, couldn't I have gotten a break at least once. How about instead of almost being frozen, I find a hot spring under the ice with some five-star resort for heads of state hidden away from the public. But no, that wasn't my luck. Instead I'm undressing some random person that I have never even met before and was about to share my most embarrassing secrets with him like some kind of telepathic slide show.

Just wonderful. But once that part was done (with me trying to ignore the attractive half god I was undressing) I got to the part I was dreading.

Now, I'm not normally shy at all, I mean, I once changed my clothing in front of Tony's driver without a second's thought. But I had never been truly naked in front of a man before, even if he was in a coma. Even though I didn't like it, I also began to strip in front of a man who was basically another Tesseract in terms of power.

When his shirt was gone, I couldn't help but cringe at the amount of scars that covered his chest, and maybe blushed just a little. If I was going to live through all of his pain, just judging from his scars this wouldn't be the most pleasant experience. I didn't even look at the man once I took off the rest of my clothes. Just trying to pretend that this whole situation wasn't happening.

Once the probably most embarrassing moment of my life was over, I have stripped myself naked in the freezing underground temple. I dragged him into the water.

NEW CHAPTER! DON'T FORGET TO FOLLOW FAVORITE AND MOST IMPORTANTLY REVIEW FOR EVERY CHAPTER.


	3. Chapter 3

The water wasn't just cold, it was the coldest thing Natasha had ever felt. The second she had stepped into the water, dragging a super powerful man with anger issues, she felt her entire body freeze up and fall forward into the water, encasing her and the son of the sea god in blackness.

FLASHBACK

At first it seemed as if the entire world had turned black, but not just the ordinary dark of night, this darkness seamed to suck the life from her. It was absolute, nothing could penetrate it. The only thought that came to mind was that this was oblivion.

Then a feeling of warmth swept through, pushing away the cold, and slowly a smile appeared. Soft and sweet, it spoke of promises of happiness and love. But it was soon gone.

Slowly more images came and went, most of them were of a younger woman in her mid-twenties, the memories of her were filled with love and understanding. At one point she felt a stinging on her hands and knees and the woman was suddenly there, standing above Natasha, and for the first time she spoke, "There there Perseus, you're ok."

The woman hugged them with a smile, and then they were off to the next memory. Most of Perseus' early memories were focused around this woman, who could only be his mom. They were often short and blurry, but Natasha understood his feelings.

As she went through his life, she found herself loving this woman as much as he did. She admired his mom and, at one point, envied him for his luck in being given her. But that envy turned to anger when his new stepdad appeared.

He first was nice, helpful, and always considerate of others, but over time he changed. Soon he started to become mean and angry, he started smoking in the house and the alcohol followed. The house that was once clean and felt like home soon started to feel like hell.

The house became filthy because of that man and his friends, and it stayed that way no matter how hard Perseus' mom tried. This went on for years, until Perseus was in the first grade, and then everything got even worse.

He came home from school one day to find his stepdad, who he had now come to call Smelly Gabe, laying on the couch with one of the bathroom mirrors in his lap and, spread across the smooth reflective surface, were lines of white powder.

Things happened that day, and his mother wasn't able to save him from the humiliation and abuse he was put through, because she had to work overtime since Gabe lost his job at the factory. Soon this happened more and more often, always when Sally was away.

By the time the sexual abuse started, Percy was in the fourth grade and having a hard time with bullying. He was constantly picked on because of his name and learning disabilities, so much so that whenever he was in public, or introducing himself to new people, he only used the name Percy and only talked when asked a direct question.

As Natasha watched his life pass through her mind, she was stunned. With all of the things that had happened in his life so far, he never once showed an ounce of resentment towards anyone. He was angry, that was for sure, but he hid it so well that no one was able to see it festering deep inside of him. Natasha couldn't help but pity whoever made him snap and become the out let for all of this anger.

But then the day came when he was introduced to the world of gods and myth, with the death of one of the most intimidating monsters of all of time. Soon his life was just one battle after another, the people he met were a blur, except for one girl, Annabeth.

Just her name was enough to bring up feelings that no twelve year old should have been able to feel. Throughout their first quest, Percy was confused. Sometimes they could get along just fine, but fights seemed to come out of nowhere There was also a contentment that he had never felt before, he was happy just by being around her, even when they fought.

More soon came, Thalia and Nico, more like siblings then cousins, and for a brief moment, it seemed as if his life was being built back up, and he started to feel real happiness.

It wasn't just memories that Natasha was living through, but pain also. Mostly the pain was minimal, scrapes and bruises were common place in the life of an agent, but there were several events that stood out. The sky was one, holding it up was something no demigod should be able to do, just the exertion of holding it up would have turned a mortal to dust, but not only did he survived, so did Annabeth.

As the memory played though her head, Natasha could feel the strain as if she was doing it herself, she could feel her bones being ground to dust, her tendons snapping, somehow she lived. However the after effects would haunt them for a long time.

The amount of weight they held destroyed their entire bodies, tearing their muscles beyond recognition, and it was only the god of medicine that saved them from being cripples for life. They had to spend weeks on mount Olympus recovering, and it was there that the son of the sea god struck up an uneasy friendship with the goddess Artemis. A friendship that kept him alive throughout the second giant war.

The second major event was Percy's trip into the river Styx. Although worse in the amount of pain he felt, it did not linger. The pain was gone as soon as he was out of the water. The torture of the hell known as Tartarus was bad because it wasn't just physical pain like all of the other events, but mental as well.

The air was filled with a hallucinogen that made people live out there worse nightmares whenever they slept, causing phobias in both Percy and Annabeth. Everything from the fear of heights, day light, and needles, to the fear of open spaces and clowns.

Everything down there was meant to break immortals, and it did on a regular basis. Tartarus tried everything to stop them, even going as far to appear in person, but even that failed and … They escaped only to face the horrors of a new war.

As Natasha looked back at Percy's memories, she saw the driving force behind him. Although it sounded cliché, his friends are what saved him, and in the end he couldn't save them. They all died, one after another, and as the day came to a close, standing on that mountain half way around the world from his home, he watched as the last of them were executed.

As the sun set, the real Perseus died, and all that was left was a monster prepared to kill the world to satisfy its taste for revenge.

It was there that the memories started to fade into a red haze, and suddenly she was there in a white room, the only thing breaking up the flat plains was a single chair with a man seated in it, chained and beaten.

He looked as if he had lost a fight with a wood chipper most of his exposed skin was covered in ragged tears, tears that looked agonizing. Before she could walk closer, the blackness returned, and with it a set of memories that the agent of SHEILD was very familiar with.

Natasha's first memories were of the orphanage where she had spent her youth. She had been dropped off there by her mother, who, after countless hours of pestering, the head mistress had finally described.

"She was a beautiful woman, Nat," said Gwyneth, "A British born citizen who had married her late husband, Nicolai, a man from wealth, some years before. She looked like one of those American movie stars- long blond hair and stunning gray eyes..."

Stopping for a minute, Gwyneth looked like she was in a faraway place, and then continued, "She had a soft spoken voice, but it had an edge to it; one that made people just listen to her… She seemed like a very smart woman."

That was all Natasha ever got out of Gwyneth. For years she lived happily in the orphanage, with all the kids her age, she was never short on friends. Then the day came when she got adopted. It was like any other summer day in Moscow, except that it was unusually warm, so all the kids were out on the ground playing and enjoying the sun. But the laughter was soon broken by the sound of Gwyn yelling out her name.

"I'll be back guys" Natasha yelled to a group of friends playing tag. Running into the main office where the yelling had come from, she came to a halt, out of breath and with a huge smile on her face. Natasha didn't notice the two other people in the room. "You need something?" She finally said, after catching her breath.

"Yes, I would like to introduce you to Mr. and Mrs. Romanova."

Startled, Natasha noticed the man and woman for the first time. Both were tall and dressed in black formal wear, as if they had just come from a high-class party. The woman was very attractive; long brown hair and a slim athletic figure, the woman spoke with an American accent and bright white teeth,

"How are you dear?" spoke, still smiling. Natasha was too afraid to answer. Looking over to the man, she was struck by how intimidating he looked, but it all disappeared the moment he smiled, his face broke out into a wide grin and he spoke in a soft voice,

"You looked pretty happy when you came in here, are you just afraid of my ugly mug?" He joked. She couldn't help but laugh at that. Looking over to the woman, she was met by a smile so kind that she could not help but smile back. Gwyn looked happy,

"The Romanova's would like to adopt you, honey." That day was the best she had ever had; it was the start of a whole new life.

Nick, as he liked to be called, was a politician. High up in the government, he was well-paid, and that showed in their house. Sitting on one hundred acres in the Russian countryside, the land itself was beautiful, covered in a thick forest and surrounded by a tall cement wall.

They never had to worry about privacy; the house was in the center of the property, although it was more of a mansion then a house. As well as the house there was also a barn, and horse pens that connected to an arena that they would spend many warm summer days in.

The house was huge, only a single story; every room had huge skylights letting in natural light. On top of the skylights there were also several terrariums spaced throughout the house; they were open at the top, birds and bats could fly in year round and nest in several bird houses and bat boxes. The rooms were filled with modern furniture; everything being less than two years old.

Nick and Alice, or mom and dad as they insisted on, had some strange hobbies. Alice was into gymnastics and martial arts, while Nick loved guns.

The reason for this being that Alice used to be an Olympic athlete, she had even won a silver medal in gymnastics that was now displayed proudly next to Nick's gold for shooting. They had both met that year at the Olympics, and one thing led to another and they were married less than a year later.

One wing of the house was completely dedicated to this, an entire training room with everything from uneven bars and a compete gym, to a gun vault the size of a small apartment filled with every type of gun imaginable.

If it involved something they loved, well, they didn't do anything by halves and that included Natasha. If she wanted to try something, they did everything to make it happen, whether it was buying a horse or dirt bike, or even just learning to play an instrument.

By the time she was fifteen, she had learned more than half a dozen languages, and knew how to rebuild her parents cars, on top of hundreds of other skills that she had accumulated over the years. But her favorites were the ones she got to do with her adoptive parents. Nat, as her dad would call her, would often be his only competition when it came to shooting; being trained from a young age, Natasha was a natural with all types of weapons and, as her dad said, she could give most of the world's best shooters a run for their money.

Her mother on the other hand, was more of a friend then a rival, and they would spend hours together practicing and just talking, but this life would soon change for the worse.

Late one new year's night, well after all their partying had stopped and everyone was asleep, a crash sounded across the house, jarring Natasha out of her sleep. Startled, the fifteen year old crept out of her room and to the main hall.

Looking over the rail, she let out a small gasp, covering her mouth so as not to be noticed; she looked on in horror as her parents were dragged across the floor by several men carrying various guns. They looked beaten and bloody, and had their hands tied behind their backs.

The men stopped in front of seven men dressed in expensive suits, men that radiated power. Natasha had to strangle another gasp, the men where all members of her dads political party and had often been over to the house to talk.

Talking with a deep voice, one of the men, who happened to be bald and bore a striking resemblance to Gorbachev, explained there being there. "Nicolai, you knew this was coming, what with your refusal to our… proposition. This was the most likely outcome." The man spoke with confidence.

Spitting out his gag, Nick snarled out, "You mean your bribe!"

Looking smug with satisfaction, the bald man continued, "You could have been the perfect person for the post. The new Nazi party needed a strong figure-head, someone with great people skills and a winning smile. Someone like you."

Nick glared at the man and spoke in a calm and deadly voice, "I would never join you, a party based on bribery and lies is no more than an organization of criminals and thieves! I would sooner die then submit to a government based on your ideas!" With a smile that sent shivers down Natasha's back, the man pulled out a gun and fired, killing Alice.

"What do you think we're here for?" With another shot, Nick fell to the ground dead. This time she couldn't keep the cries from escaping. The head of the man who had just killed her family slowly turned to look at her, his face was covered in a sadistic grin and marred by specs of blood from her parents.

Natasha was paralyzed with fear, so much so that she didn't see the man creeping up on her until it was too late. Without warning, the twice orphaned girl was picked up and thrown over the railing to the hard marble floor fifteen feet below, her head cracking hard on the stone surface.

As her vision began to fade she herd the man who took everything from her laugh out "let her burn." She woke, what felt like minutes later, to the heat of the house burning down around her and lying in a pool of her own blood. Siting up she held her head in pain she could fill the blood pouring out of a deep cut one the back of her head.

Natasha slowly turned her head to look at the bodies of her parents just a few yards away, the scent of gasoline and smoke making her eyes water even more. She couldn't do anything but wonder why she was still alive. Why couldn't they let her die?

It took more than an hour for the emergency services from the closest town to arrive, and when they did they were only met by the site of a burnt down house and the unmoving body of a girl on the front lawn.

With the death of her parents, Natasha started to unravel, losing interest in the things she once loved and focusing only on thoughts of revenge. It wasn't until one of the men who killed her parents stumbled past her late one night, drunk, did she act on her feelings.

That morning the police found his body suspended from a power line in a very upscale part of Moscow, mutilated and almost beyond recognition. It was that night that the seventeen year old Natasha decided to act on her revenge, a decision that would consume the next two years of her life.

Two years of killing the men who took everything, and with every man killed, she would sink deeper and deeper in to this revenge. She wouldn't stop until every signal man that was in the house the night her parents died had met the same end.

The police never suspected a thing, because with every death she left incriminating evidence that always pointed towards the wife of the men she killed. This practice would lead governments all around the world to calling her the Black Widow. But she was never convicted; she was too smart to leave any evidence behind.

That is until she found the man who pulled the trigger, the man who was the cause of this. She never bothered to learn his name. She kidnapped him one night in the main room at a gala, right in front of the cameras that dotted the building.

Blinded by rage she tortured him over the span of three days, so that he might have understood the pain his actions had caused her. But those three days where long enough for the organization known as SHEILD to track her down, and capture her. But in the end he died like the rest.

Natasha couldn't stop crying as she looked down at the white floor. Her tears falling steadily. She couldn't believe that her actions still affected her this way. She had spent years crafting barriers around her feelings so that she wouldn't be affected, but they had finally been broken down.

Suddenly she felt herself wrapped in a warm embrace; the hardened SHEILD agent was pulled into the scared chest of a demigod capable of destroying the world, and the only thing she could do was cry, filled with over 40 years of emotions all at the same time.

So new chapter and I know it may not be the best but it isn't six months from the last one. Also if anyone has any advice on how to make my story flow better I would appreciate it. I still need ideas for all of my story. Finally people need to stop putting so many main characters in there story it makes it hard to read and really annoying like in crossovers when you have the seven and then all of your other favorite characters, if rick messed up the lost hero so bad by adding Jason piper and there others what makes you thing you can do the same but with a completely new set of characters. REVIEW. Also it was four in the morning when I wrote the authors note.


	4. Chapter 4

Opening her eyes, Natasha found herself lying on the cold sloped floor of the crater and tightly clutching the arm of the demigod.

The agent of SHIELD tore her gaze away from his face, where she had found it when she had woken, and unwrapped herself from around his cold arm. Standing there as naked as the day she was born, the red-head realized how cold it truly was under the ice.

She then made her way up the steep slope in the most dignified way possible, tripping several times as her feet were numb. Getting to the top, she practically dove into her survival suit, though the cold still bit deep into her skin despite the layers of protection surrounding her now. But beside the cold, there was something else.

There was a pressure along her back, almost as if she was lying down. Shaking her head, she threw those thoughts to the back of her mind; focusing back on the quite possible key to the apocalypse.

She gathered up his ripped jeans and ragged t-shirt and dressed the man. The thin summer clothes, although good quality, would barely help him in the extreme cold, but it was all ether of them had. Once they both were dressed, Natasha was faced with a problem; the fact that the man wouldn't wake up irritated her greatly.

She couldn't very well drag him out of that pit, especially when she had barely gotten out on her own. Thinking over the whole situation, the agent scolded herself for not thinking ahead, but her thoughts were interrupted by the steady sound of foot-steps echoing off the ice. They approached methodically, the sound getting louder by the second.

Steeling herself against a possible threat, the agent pulled her gun from its frost-covered holster at her side. The sights were then trained immediately on the edge of the crater, waiting for the possible threat to show itself.

But when it appeared Natasha felt a horrible cold grip her heart. Looking down at her, draped in a thick black cloth and carrying what looked like a human body -dressed in the orange survival suite usually found on boats- slung over its shoulder, was... Well Natasha wasn't really positive what it was. It was tall, with dark gray skin and pointed ears, and its cat-like eyes and pointed teeth lead her to believe it was a carnivore.

It held itself in a predatory stance while it stood there.

They stared at each other, deciding on whether the other was a possible threat, and she really hoped that they wouldn't fight. The thing looked powerful, thick with so much muscle that she wasn't even sure if the bullets in her gun would penetrate far enough to do major harm. It could probably rip her in half with the sharp claws that adorned its hands. So she did the only thing she could- waited for it to attack.

SHIELD high-altitude operating base

The control room was in a panic, the drop ship that was carrying more than a dozen agents had suddenly vanished from all of the scanners, but not before it sent out one last signal telling of its demise.

This sent the technicians into a frenzy, the shouts and typing rose to a feverous pitch; dozens of technical readouts appeared on the main screen, only to disappear seconds later, too fast for the untrained eye to discern any information.

But the room was filled with trained eyes, and everything was learned from those readouts in the brief amount of time.

"Director," the lead Tec reported, "The ship was hit by something solid before it crashed. Something attacked it. Whatever it was it focused on the vital parts of the plane, such as the fuel tank and rooters, leaving the armored hull of the craft intact."

"Did anyone survive?" the calm Fury asked. Not a single emotion showed on his face.

"From the signs we saw just after the incident, yes. One Natasha Romanova, she, for some reason, just before the plane was destroyed, strapped herself into one of Stark's pods and ejected."

Suspicion immediately found its way into Fury's head. Could she have known?

"You said that she ejected before the plane was brought down, is it possible that the pilots had some warning?" – but before he had finished his question the tec was already shaking his head.

"No, we were in contact the entire time. The signal was very strong and we were sent all information as it was happening. Something like this would have set off dozens of alarms, both on the carrier and on the jet itself. The only explanation that I can think of is that the system was compromised."

"But that isn't possible, to an outside source like a hacker or malicious virus, all systems on the ship are closed besides the communication systems, and those are on their own circuit and are not connected to anything."

"With it being a closed system it could, I hate to say this, be an inside job. Someone who had access to the jet itself tampered with its advance warning systems."

Immediately thoughts of the HYDRA incident that had happened a few years before came to everyone's mind, the wounds of those betrayals where still fresh.

A cold look passed over the director's face as he gave his orders in a calm and deadly voice. "Confine all people who had contact with the jet in the last week, I also want all of the security footage up on the screen right now. We are going to find the traitor and he is going to pay."

His sentences where clipped and oozed with authority, so much so that the men and women in the room where all but tripping over one another to do as he asked.

More like demanded, mused Maria Hill, who stood off to the side watching the entire thing silently.

In less than five minutes, three mechanics an auxiliary crew and two guards were in a number of small cells in the center of the floating city being questioned by SHIELD's top interrogators.

While all of that was happening, ten agents had been sat in front of a bank of monitors, all of them showing the same scenes of the inside and outside of jet number thirteen.

Locked away in its docking bay behind a titanium door, the ghost image of a plane that no longer existed played in slow motion, its every detail being taken in.

For three days they interrogated and searched the security system for any trace of deceit, or any leads that would tell them who the traitor was.

It wasn't until the third day that one of the agents, a short man who was often over-looked, found what they were searching so hard for.

On his fourth and last hour of watching footage, he noticed something, just a small flicker in the video for just for a split second. The video paused, trapping the image of a small bug on the screen for a moment longer than it should have been. Finding this, the man yelled in excitement as he showed the others in the room what he had found.

When they looked at the data closely they found it, the smoking gun. A single still frame of the intruder. A picture that would cause more questions than it gave answers.

Looking at the printed out photo, Nick Fury's face turned from indifferent to one of almost shock. For the most part the still frame was normal, just a picture of the inside of the jet- the interior was the essence of simplicity, no banks of buttons or switches normally seen on a jet liner, just several touch screen monitors that controlled all of the billion-dollar jet's functions.

No, what shocked him was the black mass that hung in midair. Slightly larger than a basketball, with a withered arm reached out of it like some kind of portal right into one of the most secure areas in the world.

He had found his culprit. The arm itself was a dark gray, and although it was hard to tell at first it, was clearly that of a woman, and old one by the look of it. All of the fingers had thick and pointed nails, with one of them rested lightly on one of the high Tec monitors. And that was it, nothing more.

For several seconds after seeing this, Fury was absolutely still. Then all hell broke loose. Yelling in rage, Fury lived up to his name. He started by throwing everything within reach, smashing glass and the sound of objects crashing into the metal bulkhead filled the room.

For a terrifying minute he tore through his office, breaking everything in sight. Finally he came to a stop, his hands turning white with how hard he clutched at his empty desk; the paper that bared the image of the intruder was torn in half, sitting on the ground by one of his feet. Out of breath and with a wild look in his eyes, he stood there in the recharged.

The last time he had seen the arm was when it was ripping the life from his parents while they slept.

"Director," Agent Hill's voice sounded from the intercom in the ceiling, "The storm is starting to dissipate."

Slowly, the look of rage faded away from his face, turning almost peaceful.

Closing the door to his office, the director to the world's most powerful organization made his way to the bridge to prepare for landing.

If Agent Romanova was somehow connected to the crash, and by association the arm, then she would die. Along with anyone who got in his way

The monster that held Percy slung over its shoulder, now dressed in the once-empty survival suit, lead the way down the labyrinth of tunnels, Natasha walking by his side. "Lord Poseidon sent me here to lead you to the exit and explain a few things about your bonding with his son," the hulking form grumbled.

"First off, my people, the Yoma, or the true dark elves, have been practicing this ritual to a lesser extent with our mates for more than ten millennia. The act of bonding one's mind to another's is extremely personal, and can lead to some side effects."

This realization sent a worried look to Natasha's face.

The most common is a sharing of knowledge- you may find yourself with skills and knowledge that you didn't know before. Things like skills the young prince has acquired over the years. You also might find yourself craving physical contact with your partner, like right now," the clearly male dark elf said with a hint of humor.

Startled, Natasha found he was right without her knowing it, one of her hands had found its way to Percy's shoulder. She immediately pulled away, but soon found that she missed the contact.

"Lord Poseidon told me most of the details concerning his son's current condition, and there is a term to describe it. He is what we call an awakened being, someone of great power. His anger tainted him, and with his divine blood he has gained a new mastery over his powers.

"At times when he is under extreme circumstances, he can tap into this new power. But be warned, he is incapable of controlling himself when that happens. His body will change into something new, something horrible, and he will be a danger to all of those around him.

"In most cases, the form of life, whether it is a demigod, Yoma, or, vary rarely, human, will hunt down and devour others of its kind. This act of cannibalism sends the individual deeper into insanity, and makes the madness take complete control.After this point there is no hope for them.

"In most cases the individual is also weak of will and is easily changed, but even if the person is weak they can awaken untold powers and strengths.

"The first of the divine beings, the primordials, were awakened beings that started out as gods. When they changed, they took on their new forms- such as the earth, the sky, and water, among others.

"With your companion being a half-god, he could become so much more powerful than anything the world has seen in a very long time, he would not only have had the dormant power in his body at his disposal, but that of his father and all of the Olympian council.

"But you are stopping that, you are the key to unlocking all of the destruction he is capable of, but in order for that to happen, you would need to die and his connection to his mortal side severed."

"I don't plan on that happening any time soon." Natasha interrupted. The determined look in her eye made the intimidating beast believe her.

"But even so, disease and accidents are not under your control, and even if you were to live to an old age, any extreme stress could break your connection, the backlash killing you.

This is why anyone who shows any sign of this is immediately killed without remorse. They are, after all, a threat to anything around them."

…

"I understand that, but is it normal for one of the… bonded, to stay unconscious for so long?" For the hours they had been walking, this thought had bothered her.

"In some cases, yes. If the person in question had severe mental damage, then it is common for them to sleep until it has completely healed."

At last they came to the exit; the snow that had before whited-out everything was now gone, and the sun shown high in the northern sky, giving back some form of warmth. With a grunt Percy was set down at the entrance. Looking outside, the uncloaked form of the carrier dominated the white landscape as it descended. Turning back to their short time companion, she was startled to see that he had disappeared back into the twilight of the tunnels.

Looking down at the agent of SHIELD as she dragged Perseus Jackson out into the light, the three fates almost smiled in satisfaction. Three hundred years of planning and all of their hard work would come to fruition. "Gone will be the world of gods and technology," they spoke in unison. "A world where one's own fate is in their hands and you, Natasha Romanova and Perseus Jackson, will be the tools to shape this new world. A world without fate, a world without god, a world without boundaries."

Ok new chapter, hope you like it. As always, I'm looking for ideas. Please review.

Stories I want to see you (my readers) write:

Percy Jackson/Claymore crossover; Percy/Claire pairing

Percy Jackson/Black Lagoon crossover; Percy/Revey pairing

Percy Jackson/Spice and Wolf crossover; Percy/Holo pairing

Percy Jackson/Artemis Fowl crossover; Percy/Holly pairing

Percy Jackson/Sward art online crossover; Percy/Asuna pairing


	5. Chapter 5

As the floating air craft carrier descended through the suddenly clear sky, all those on board prepared to receive the bodies of their fellow agents that were killed in the plane crash.

The grim faces of those who lost friends were common-place on the flight deck, men and women waiting for some sense of closure. Most of the people in SHIELD had made close attachments and lifelong friendships with their coworkers; being in a life threatening job and having to depend on one another tended to do that.

One by one, the jets that had been sent out to retrieve their fallen comrades returned, heavy with body bags and experimental equipment. Their grim-faced pilots disembarked in silence for the most part, the only sound that could be heard was that of the wind and the engines clicking themselves cool.

It was a depressing sight, the grim faces and the body bags lined up on the flight deck, each one a monument to a dark grief called loss. But the horrible silence was broken by one of the medical cars, being driven with some form of emergency, coming to a halt just past the outer-most jets.

The car's passengers immediately jumped from the interior, all of the members of SHIELD that had come topside to see their deceased friends stared in confusion, and then hope, when the sound of a fast-approaching jet made itself known.

Traveling at a high rate of speed, it flew across the white expanse, sending up a roster tail of ice and snow in its wake. Maybe someone had survived, the collective thought almost yelled from the minds of all those present. But when the door flew open after its hurried lading, the men and women of SHIELD could only stare in shock.

Wheeled out of the plane, dressed in a civilian survival suit, was just that, a civilian. Although no one could see his face due to the oxygen mask, all of them could see the frantic look of the attending medical team and instantly knew that this man could still possibly die. Seconds after the man was wheeled out, so was another person.

Both of them were thrown into the on-deck ambulance and rushed off. The red hair of Natasha Romanova imprinted itself into everyone's minds; somehow the agent had survived the crash -an impossible feat in its self, but also managed to save the life of a civilian who had been left on the ice.

Looking through the one way glass of the infirmary, Nick Fury watched as the highly trained staff worked to save the only survivors of the storm. As soon as the winds had died down enough, Fury had sent out a team to retrieve agent Romanova.

Using the tracking beacon in her suit, they had found her quickly, just three miles away from where the main ship had landed. The team had found the longtime member of SHIELD collapsed on the ground next to a comatose man.

At that point, Fury was even more confused, and that sense of paranoia that he had felt when hearing about Natasha's miraculous escape had come back with a vengeance. How had this person survived all this time in the storm? Who the hell was this man, and what was he doing more than two hundred miles inland in the first place? The more he thought about it, the angrier he got.

"Director." Maria Hill suddenly spoke.

"What?" a still seething Fury replied.

Stunned for a moment at his abruptness, and the amount of anger in his voice, it took her several minutes to reply, "I have all the information on the man that agent Romanova found." Fury stared at her impatiently, waiting for her to continue. "Perseus Jackson, he has a somewhat rebellious past. With his learning problems, it seems like he got in quite a few altercations, several of which were reported to the police. He is for the most part a decent person, other than those incidents, most of which it seems where not his fault. Besides the problems outside of school, he had several in school, most of which look to be the results of supervisors not paying attention."

Grunting with impatience, Fury gestured for her to continue.

"Although diagnosed with several learning disabilities, the guy was tested and confirmed to be a genius, with an IQ of one hundred and fifty seven."

Fury's face remained placid as she continued, "Percy's father went missing early in his life and was never found, this was also the case for his first stepfather. As of right now they are both presumed dead. At sixteen, Percy left school and disappeared for a short time, before reappearing over in Europe around the time that the storm appeared."

Walking towards the window, Fury looked down at Perseus. Could he be involved with the storm and his cousin's death in it? Was it possible? No, it was likely. In fact, Fury would bet his life on the fact that Perseus Jackson was somehow involved with the storm.

Turning back to agent Hill, Fury waited for her to continue. "After the storm, Jackson was admitted into a private college, the Athens College of science, where he was given a full ride scholarship. The school its self was started up that year, and was being funded by the American government and headed by a Nobel Prize winning scientist.

This year as a senior research project, the graduating class chartered a research ship and was going to study the storm and its long term effects on the global weather patterns, but half way through their research trip an off-shoot of the main storm entered the area that the boat was in. It was assumed that it had sunk with all passengers being lost.

They were presumed dead after all searches came up negative, not a signal piece of wreckage was found. The last of the searchers were called off, which, Director, brings up the question; How did Mr. Jackson survive?"

"What is the current status of both Perseus Jackson, and agent Romanova?" He questioned, as he made his way back to his still-destroyed office, the professional Maria Hill still in tow.

"Jackson is unconscious, with what looks to be a concussion, and Romanova is still suffering from hypothermia, but the doctors are positive that they will both make full recoveries."

"Good," stated a calm Fury, "Then move them both to the Hulk's containment cell under full surveillance."

Confused, Maria asked, "The two of them? I could understand Jackson to a degree, because no normal human could have survived that long, but Natasha is an agent of SHIELD, one of our top and most trusted agents."

Rounding on her suddenly, Fury had the same wild look from earlier back in his eyes.

"It doesn't matter, Agent!" He yelled,

"As of right now, all of Agent Romanova's benefits as a SHIELD agent are ceased. She is under suspicion, and is going to be treated as such until further information on whether she is a spy or not is found. If you can't fallow orders, Agent, you will be going in with them!"

"But why the Hulk's cell? Why not one of the other cells?"

When replying, Fury's voce was cold, "Whatever Jackson is, he is not human."

With that statement hanging out in the air, the director slammed the rocket proof door of his office, but not before Agent Hill saw the state of it.

There was no way to describe what happened. One second, Natasha was having a wonderful dream, just lying there under a century-old oak tree of some unknown forest. The strong summer light came down through the leaves, the warmth gently kissing her skin.

Letting out a small sound of contentment, she started to roll over to get into a more comfortable position, only to be stopped by the feeling of a hand in hers, and then the warmth of someone's breath on her neck.

"Natasha."

Her name was whispered with so much love that it almost hurt, so she opened her eyes to see who it was. But as soon as she opened her eyes, she found herself standing over Percy protectively, breathing hard. The IV that had resided in her arm had been ripped out, leaving a stream of blood in its wake.

One of her hands was clenched tightly in a fist, her knuckles throbbed from being ripped and torn while fighting. The cause of this was plain to see, lying on the ground with a broken arm and smashed nose, was a male orderly.

She stepped back in shock, only to have a pair of thick arms wrap themselves tightly around her body, lifting her off the ground. So she did what a life time of training had taught her.

Throwing back her head, she was rewarded with the sound of cartilage breaking. With a pained gasp, she was thrown to the floor, but before she was even half way there her foot was traveling at a speed that was hard to follow.

The kick smashed into the nurse's chest, sending the man stumbling back and Natasha rolling forward. When she came up out of her crouch, she finally realized where she was.

She was standing in the center of the Hulk's maximum security cell, only now it had been re-designed out-fitted with all the trappings of your standard hospital; well, except the two bloody and battered staff members. After she realized where she was, Natasha rose out of her crouch, standing to her full height.

Only to come to realize that instead of her standard shield uniform, she was in a hospital gown- the ones that never seemed to close up in the back. She would need some clothes in order to keep her image of the cold assassin, one with no emotions except rage and anger, but that would have all been for nothing if she was to show any form of emotion in front of her coworkers.

With a quick glance around the room, she almost let out a sigh of relief when she found that the only guards in the room were in front of her, staring in fear at what she had done to the two physicians. That is, until she heard a foreign voice in her head.

"I could think of a worse sight to wake up to." Slowly, she shifted her head until she was looking over her shoulder and down at the now awake Perseus Jackson. She knelt down as if to check on his condition, but instead she leaned in and whispered in his ear, "You know, there are worse things than death." With that she stood up and moved towards the folded clothes that where set on one of the machines.

Groaning, Percy sat up in his hospital bed. Being frozen in one position for as long as he was, left you with some stiff joints. It took him longer then he would have liked to get into the comfortable sweats that where provided for him. It was as if his entire body was one open nerve, every movement sent pain rocketing through his body.

Standing was also painful, but before he could take more than a handful of steps, a wave a pain came flooding through his body and his vision suddenly turned black, sending him to the ground as he almost passed out. Seeing this, the now-dressed agent ran to his side, wincing at the amount of blood she could see pouring from his head, obviously the result of the demigod's hitting his head on the corner of the table.

But things soon took a turn for the worse.

Blood started pouring from his eyes and ears, and the demigod started thrashing. Natasha could do nothing but hold on for dear life, her arms being wrapped around his chest and upper arms. She was forced to use all of her weight to keep him down. All the while, the normally stoic woman was screaming for help.

Unbeknownst to her, the doctors that where just outside of the cell were being held back by their commanding officer. Fury had arrived just in time to see the man fall, and had held back the medical staff just to see what would happen.

But to his disappointment, the man calmed down after a few minutes, leaving a flushed and panting Natasha Romanova on the floor next to him. But what happened next didn't just surprise the director of SHIELD, hell it surprised everyone in the room.

After getting her breath back, the normally cold Natasha looked at her cellmate with a look of understanding and something more, before taking the corner of a sheet and almost lovingly wiping the blood from his face, setting his head in her lap. Nodding once, the medical staff and several guards entered into the room.

He had never seen her act that way, Fury thought, in all her time working with the agency, hell, even Clint wasn't that close to her. What could this man have done to have gained this kind of action from the heartless Natasha in the short amount of time she had been down on the ice?

Unless… unless she had known him before all of this happened.

The director watched as the med Techs placed the man back on his bed, bandaging up his cut and running tests. All the while the red head stood protectively over the man, holding onto one of his hands. That kind of caring only came from years of knowing a person.

"Hill," Fury said, coming out of his thoughts, "Is it possible that Romanova could have come into contact with Jackson in anyway beforehand?"

"I'm sorry sir?" she replied, confused at what the director was getting at. "But no, there isn't any possible way. For the most part we can account for both of their time, and there isn't any way that the two of them could have interacted with each other." Scowling, Fury went to turn away, but was interrupted by a cough from Maria.

"Sir, there was an anomaly with both Perseus Jackson and agent Romanova."

He rounded on her with that same look in his eye.

"On further inspection by some of the equipment, we found evidence of deep tissue scarring hidden beneath the surface of their skin, invisible to the naked eye. But what's even stranger, is that all of the scars on both Jackson and Natasha are identical in terms of placement and severity.

They indicate prolonged torture, and the tests point to the injuries being received at the same time." This new piece of evidence seemed to validate all of Fury's thoughts; they knew each other, with Natasha acting the way she was, and the evidence of shared torture.

"Maria?"

"Yes sir?" said the nervous agent.

"When will they be ready to interrogate?"

"A few minutes ago I would have said when Jackson woke up, but with this new development, I'm not positive. Natasha on the other hand should be ready right now.

"Good, send her to the main debriefing room under heavy guard in an hour, I want all of the equipment up and running. If she is lying, then I want to know about it." With that, Nick started to walk down the corridor back towards his office, before stopping.

"And Hill?"

"Yes sir?"

"While I'm talking to Natasha I want a complete set of medical work on Jackson; blood plasma, bone marrow, spinal fluid, everything. If he is hiding something, I want to know… Also," he said, almost as an afterthought, "Make sure that he doesn't have any pain killers. We can't have any chemicals messing up the test results."

Seconds later he was off down the hall and around the corner, leaving a stunned and horrified Agent Hill standing in his wake.

After the SHIELD medics had stabilized Percy and restrained him so he would not hurt himself, Natasha was lead out of the cell by a dozen highly trained officers. The clicking of the chains around her ankles and wrists was bad enough, but the man standing behind her felt it necessary to force the barrel of his gun into the small of her back, as if to speed up her progress.

At least she hoped that it was the barrel of his gun, if it wasn't, then man wasn't going to survive long enough to tell anyone about it.

Her fears were put to rest though when they passed by a particular piece of hallway, where the metal bulkheads had been replaced and they had not had the time to have them painted over.

Overall, she had to say that she looked fine, her outward appearance hadn't really changed besides the slight tiredness that had crept on to her face, but that could have to do with the fact the her reflection was slightly distorted by the metal. Leaving her makeshift mirror behind, she couldn't help her thoughts drifting back to the demigod that was currently sleeping in their shared cell.

When he had fallen down, she had at first thought that he was just messing around with her, their now-shared memories seemed to point towards him doing something of the like. But no, it was something different. When he had started screaming she had immediately known what it was.

That sound was permanently engraved in her head. Those were the screams of Tartarus; of acid in your lungs, of glass dust in your eyes. He was reliving his time down there, even after years of confinement in the ice, that place still affected him and that worried her.

When she first ran over to him, all of his muscle was bunched up, ready to attack or defend. He was at the time so tense it could visibly be seen, but as soon as she had touched him he started to relax. Not only did his reaction surprise her, but so did her actions after he had calmed down.

She didn't know where that had come from, but seeing him in pain, even just for a moment, had pulled out these feeling from her. Emotions that she had thought were lost, never to return. Mentally shaking her head, she reprimanded herself. It had been a mistake to show her emotions anywhere there were SHIELD members that would use anything against her to forward their own motives.

But… there was something driving her to comfort the hurting demigod. It was something guttural, maybe even primal. It had caused her physical pain to see Perseus in that situation. She wasn't sorry for what she did, but she was confused.

She was thinking so deeply about the matter, that the world's deadliest red head had forgotten where she was, and only remembered when she had been shoved into the plain metal seat of the interrogation room. She almost had to growl in frustration, this was the same room she had been taken to when she had first been apprehended by the agency years ago.

The dent she made in the wall with her interrogators head was still there, probably to frighten people who were brought there. With a sudden bang, the door opened again. Letting in an almost disheveled Nickolas Fury, who immediately sat across from her and jumped into his questions.

"What happened." His first question was quick and to the point, and was exactly what she had expected from him.

So she told him the lie that she had prepared.

"The plane was hit by turbulence," she started, only to be interrupted by the director slamming his fist into the metal table with enough force to make Natasha mentally wince.

He yelled, "That's a lie! We had communications with the aircraft the entire time, and not once did they indicate anything but a smooth ride! Now TELL ME!" He bellowed, his voice reaching a feverish pitch, "WHY DID YOU EJECT OUT OF THE AIR CRAFT PREMATURELY!"

Although surprised by his yelling, Natasha didn't let anything show, keeping her voice impassive and controlled. "The turbulence knocked me into the po-"

"STOP LYING TO ME AGENT ROMANOVA!" He almost screamed, "You ejected just before the impact that destroyed the plane, the only survivor! If you're not going to tell me why you left those men to die, then tell me how you managed to survive down on the surface."

"I fell down a crack in the ice-"

"Stop lying." he interrupted once again, calming down.

After an uncomfortable pause, she continued.

"I fell down the ice, at one point I was knocked unconscious, and when I woke up Perseus was there. He had pulled me down into a sort of snow cave he had made at the bottom of the break, using the snow that had fallen with me."

His one eye stared at her almost accusingly, but he didn't say anything. "When I woke up he explained what had happened. We spent some time down there, and eventually found our way out. By the time we made it to the surface, the storm was gone."

The entire time she had been telling her false story, she had stared him down, not bothering to look away. Fury was a master at reading people's emotions. That one eye was better than any lie detector, and was one of the main reasons why he was the head of command.

They went back and forth for hours, the standard alarm clock that seemed required in all rooms of the like sat on the wall ticking the time away. Every time she told him her story, he would reply by in some way calling her a liar. Which she would reply to by restating her previous statements. But around the fourth hour, having not taken one break, the interrogation changed.

Without warning, and by some unknown signal for the man across from her, the men brought in a sleek monitor and set it down on the table facing her.

Talking for the first time in the five minutes, Fury said with a dark glee to his voice that scared her, "You forced me to do this with all of your lying," he informed her, "If you would have just admitted to be working against the agency, I would have left you alone in some prison for the rest of your life… but now… now we get to have fun."

The monitors suddenly sprang to life, showing a strapped-down Percy bound in some white room. The type of white used to have the greatest contrast with spilt blood. When she saw him lying there, all of the blood immediately left her face, a soft gasp inadvertently escaping her mouth.

Hearing her reaction, Fury had to suppress a smile, this was going to be easier then he thought. With her hands covering her mouth, Natasha watched in horror as Percy was descended on by men in white, knives constantly flashing in the light. Soon the perfect white of the room was stained scarlet with his blood.

After the first few minutes, one of the faceless men brought out needles and a bone saw, which were, to her horror, used to take samples of his bone marrow, and enter chips of bones from different areas across his body. What made it worse, was the fact that Percy's eyes where open the entire time. She could see the tears pouring down his face from the pain.

The entire event took more than ten minutes from the first cut, to the time the monitor blacked out. By the end of it, she had tears running down her face, and was shaking in rage.

Turning to Fury, she lunged, forgetting that she had been cuffed to the table, and was stopped just a few inches from his neck, leaving her fingers tightening as if to strangle the life out of him. But after it had been made apparent that she was not going to be able to reach him, the proud woman broke down further, collapsing in on herself, her arms wrapping around her stomach.

She just couldn't help it, she had seen his past and how good of a person he was, and what did it get him? Nothing but cold steel and life she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy.

During this she could vaguely hear Fury asking her more questions, but she just ignored him. If she answered honestly now, than they were both dead. For better or worse they had to survive the experiences that would come. Eventually he gave up, but not before adding a few bruises to her ribs and face. By the time she left the room, she had to be dragged out.

Even being on the edge of consciousness, a state that couldn't be considered being awake, she could see the face of Maria Hill, staring shocked at her battered figure as she was dragged down the hall.

The worst type of torture in Percy's opinion was that with needles. He hated those little things. How could something so small inflict so much pain?

He could have ignored the cutting and the chipping off of bone fragments to be studied, but feeling the needles bite deep into his flesh and into the gap in-between the vertebrae in his back, but the worst by far was when they took samples from his eyes.

It was a god send when he was placed back in the strange glass room. They had un-ceremoniously thrown his body on the floor, not even bothering to set him on the bed. Even now he could feel the puddle of blood spreading around him. The wounds wouldn't be enough to kill him, but if left unattended they would permanently scar the demigod. He must have been lying there for an hour before the door to his fish bowl was opened, and his new found companion came stumbling in. But her painful walk turned panicked when she saw him. With the door slamming shut, they were left in silence; his pained breathing almost matched hers perfectly.

Slowly, Natasha made her way over to him and sat down, almost crying out when she felt her broken ribs ache painfully.

The first words out of Percy's mouth were ones of concern for the spy. "Are you okay?" Without answering, Natasha pulled his head carefully into her lap, not wanting to hurt him further. But judging from the brief look of pain that flickered across his face, it wasn't enough.

"I'm fine, it's you that we need to worry about," She said quietly. "I'm... sorry for that, I was supposed to protect you and now…"

Her little speech was interrupted by the sounds of the demigods snoring. Smiling, she shifted him again so he was next to her. Neither one of them could get into the high-topped medical beads, and probably couldn't even get off of the ground; so she pulled down the blankets from the nearest bed and covered the two of them. Not worrying about the blood stained floor below them.

Maria Hill watched as they dragged Natasha Romanova down the hall, her not being able walk on her own from the severe beating the director had given her. The whole situation disgusted her, not only with her friend's interrogation, but with Mr. Jackson's torture.

Something was wrong with Fury. Was he snapping under the pressure? Or was something else happening?

But whatever it was it needed to stop. SHIELD didn't have the authority to do these kinds of things. It was unethical, and would turn the agency into the people they had hunted down for so long. If she didn't do something soon, then their two current prisoners could end up dead.

No, she had to get them out of here, and as soon as possible. But before she could do that, they both needed medical attention.

What was happening with Fury?

There you go a new chapter. Please review.

CHECK OUT MY OTHER STORIES

A New Beginning (the first chapter had been rewritten and is part of the reason why it took me so long to update.)

My one shot Love After Death I've gotten some positive responses to this one and want more people to read it.

If you do read ether of my stories pleas leave a review they help out so much especially the long detailed ones.

Also I really want to see a Percy Jackson Kane chronicles crossover with a Percy Bast paring (Percy/Bast)!


	6. Chapter 6

Waking up after getting a severe beating is never fun. The aching spy should know, it had happened to her several times before. But there wasn't just a physical pain this time; there was a mental pain too. It wasn't like the violence that had been directed at her was from some terrorist or member of a drug cartel, no it was from a man she once thought to be her friend.

That's what was most painful when waking up. To know that a friend could do this, made the spy's thoughts go to a deep dark place, one where there was little hope of getting out alone. But luckily for her, she wasn't alone. As if sensing her unease, the demigod lying next to her wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her tight against his chest.

She felt his presence in her mind, it was like a pin prick of pain, something long forgotten, but still felt. He was awake and, judging from their connection, in pain which was to be expected with the type of medical tests they had done to him.

All of which would have normally been completed under massive amounts of drugs. But he had not had that luxury. He had to go through the pain of having pieces of bone chipped from his body while he sat there, strapped down and awake. It had been bad just watching it.

With some hesitation at what she would see, the SHIELD agent rolled over to look at the demigod. If it had been bad watching it from a deferent room, seeing him there staring back at her with bloodied eyes, the whites turned an almost crimson brown because of a broken blood vessel in his eye from the needle that had been forced into it.

Being so close to him, she could smell the disinfectant and leftover blood from the surgeries. The whole situation made her sick just thinking about it.

What almost broke her were his eyes. There was no accusation in them, no hatred towards her for not protecting him like she had been charged to do.

They were lifeless, no emotions could force their way onto their darkened surface. But she didn't break; she looked back into these pained depths, not blinking. She had to take responsibility for her actions. Looking at his broken form was her punishment.

She could have prevented this if she would have tried harder. But for now she would look at what her failure had done. She would take in his pain and never forget it. She would do what she had always done when she failed a mission, she would learn from her mistakes and work to make things better.

Slowly a small smile crept its way onto his face. He didn't say anything, he didn't have to. This brief display was for her benefit, to show the red head that he didn't blame her that he was fine.

"Are you ok?" She should have expected him to worry about her before himself.

"Fine a little sore but I don't think anything is broken."

"Good, I was worried." His voice was quiet, almost a whisper; but due to how close they were lying on the floor, she could hear him just fine.

"You were worried? I saw you go under the knives, I saw them cut into you, I saw parts of your body that should never see the light of day, and you were worried about me."

As soon as his smile came back, she knew that she had said something wrong. It was different from the last one- she could see the mirth in his eyes, changing them so much from the dead ones she had woken up to.

"Parts that should never see the light of day… Are you positive we are talking about the surgery I went through or were you looking at something else?"

To the spy's utter embarrassment; she could feel a blush creep onto her face. Her reaction made him break out laughing, even though it clearly pained him. Seeing the light come back to him made her forget her embarrassment, and she too was laughing even though it was painful.

She didn't know why she was embarrassed so easily by the man, but it felt nice. It felt like she didn't have to meet any expectations. It took them several minutes to calm down to where they had fallen into a familiar quiet... But a sudden thought made her break the comfortable silence.

"Percy?" she said, her face masked by a frown.

"Yes, Natasha?"

"Why didn't you use your powers? I mean, if you wanted to, you could have torn the ship to pieces without hurting anyone, but you didn't. You just sat there and let them do those things to you… why?"

He looked thoughtful for a moment, thinking over what he was going to say.

"At first I didn't use my powers because if I did I knew that fury's suspicions could be seen as justified, and he would know that I wasn't entirely human. He might find out about…"

Nodding her head in agreement she had expected this response, but then he said something else, didn't he.

"Perseus, you said at first you didn't use your powers because of Fury what about after that."

He looked almost sheepish at her catching his mistake. Something he had hoped would be over-looked but he should have known better, the woman in front of him was trained for these types of things.

"Well… I…" he tried to explain without success.

"Go on." The two words, accompanied by a glare, was enough to send the demigod into a cold sweat.

Sighing in defeat, he admitted what had happened. "I was never planning on using my powers but… when your boss started to hit you, I could feel it. I could feel your pain on top of mine, the way you felt betrayed, everything. And I wanted to rip that man apart. And I started to… I reached for that power. The one to use a person's body against them."

This admission made the Russian's face change into one of horror; she knew what he was talking about. The memories of his time spent in Tarterus and the experience he had with the ancient goddess.

"But when I reached for it, I found myself lost to the power like I did before. I didn't care though- if I could stop what that man was doing to you, it would have been worth it... I almost lost it again, but I pulled back. I didn't want to give into it, if I did... Well you know what would have happened."

He took a shaky breath, as if he was remembering the moment that had happened just hours ago.

"I couldn't use any of it."

Natasha could see the near miss terrified him, hell, if he did give into that horrible power, the world would have ended. Slowly, she felt some rage start to build deep in her gut. Fury had almost caused the end of the world because of some paranoia. The man was snapping, years of stress were breaking the man, and at some point- if things could not be fixed, he would turn into one of those tyrants he had hunted for years. But right now, the red head had more pressing matters to deal with.

"It's fine Percy, we just have to make sure nothing like that will happen again." She said with as much sympathy as she could.

"That's easier said than done, Nat." The demigod replied, only to receive a glare from the mortal. But her heated look didn't bother the demigod, if anything, it only made his smile grow.

"Don't call me Nat ever again." Her voice going ice cold and their previous conversation completely forgotten.

"Why, because that's what your dad called you? Because, just like you, I saw all of those memories. I know how much you miss him, how much you wish for someone to call you that."

At this point, the super spy couldn't even look at the man. Somehow, he had turned their conversation around and pinned it on her. She had hated that name, even when her dad called her it. He only ever seemed to use it when making fun of something she had done. But over the years, not having someone call her that, someone close that she could joke around with, had made her closed off from everyone else.

"Just please don't call me that."

"Okay I won't… for now. But were not finished with this yet." He replied with a knowing look.

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of the door to their cell opening. They both immediately sat up, not wanting to be caught off guard lying on the ground or be seen as being weak. But that plan went out of the window when an involuntary groan escaped their throats, almost in sync. Their bodies sore from their respective beatings and surgery.

To their relief though, it wasn't Fury with another round of torture, it was the indifferent medical staff from before, wheeling in several carts of supplies.

Helping the prisoners up from where they had spent the night, the medical team bandaged all of their wounds without saying a word. It took the better part of an hour for the two of them to be seen to properly, and by the time they had left, both Natasha and Perseus looked like they were monsters in some Egyptian B rate movie. Most of Natasha's injuries were, as stated by a more sympathetic doctor, deep tissue bruising and some minor cuts, like her split eyebrow, and while they were extremely painful, they were in no way life threatening.

Percy on the other hand was much worse off. Most of the wounds he had received were the result of dull surgical knives, a request from the director, resulting in more pain and much more damage. Other than adding more stitches to his cuts and cleaning the wounds, they also took the time to flush out most of the blood from his eye, turning it back to its normal white. Sadly, they didn't give him anything for the pain.

They soon left with the dirty blankets and all of their used medical supplies. Leaving the couple to their own devices again.

"Percy?" Natasha began, after her least favorite members of SHIELD had left. A question having frosted its way into her head while there were being bandaged up.

"Why is that whenever you've woken up, your mind goes immediately into the gutter?" she asked jokingly.

The demigod replied with a tone of voice that suggested they were talking about the weather, instead of his earlier behavior.

"First off, I'm a man. When I say that, what I mean is it is extremely difficult for me to not notice an extremely beautiful woman who is trapped in the same room as me in that way." His compliment only brought back Natasha's earlier blush.

Even across the room it should have been apparent to him of the super spy's embarrassment, but he didn't notice, he just continued on.

"It's hard enough waking up next to you and not finding myself having those thoughts, but waking up to find you standing in front of me without anything covering your…"

As if realizing his mistake, he tried to stop. But it was too late, with another hard look, the red head demanded an answer, "My what?"

"You're um… back?" He questioned. Liking that he tried to expand on that.

"What I mean, is that you have perfect shoulder blades and wonderful um…" he stopped, his excuses cut short at seeing Natasha's look intensify.

But in truth Natasha wasn't mad, she was laughing on the inside, and was trying not to let the man know. But it was a losing battle, and she was soon holding her stomach, the deep-belly laughter triggering some of her injuries. She couldn't help it, one second he was embarrassing her, and the next, he was a stuttering mess.

But then the seriousness crept back into his face. It was a look the man reserved for when he lead armies, or faced off against the gods themselves. If Fury was to walk in at that moment and see that look, there would be no doubt that the man was dangerous.

"Natasha, we need to talk about this situation." His voice drawing her attention to his sudden mood change.

Moving towards him, she sat down on his bed, inches from his now dark presence.

"We're in a dark spot Natasha, from your memories, I can tell that Fury is starting to crack, and he will be a danger to everyone if he is allowed to."

"I know it's just…" Natasha began, but was unable to finish because she didn't know what else to say. The man who they were talking about had practically saved her life. But now… now he had changed. His strong feelings when it came to crime were wholly focused on her and the innocent person sitting next to her.

Seeing this and how hard she was taking the situation, Percy did the only thing he could. He wrapped a scarred arm around her shoulders and pulled the spy into his side.

"Don't worry about it Natasha, I don't plan on hurting the man, but we do need to get away from him."

"I know Percy, but we don't have anywhere to go. SHIELD has members in every country and government organization in the world. They have resources that surpass even the United States government. They have fleets of spy satellites that could spot a Frenchmen's fake hair piece. Where could we go to escape that?" By the end her voice had turned hopeless. She after all knew SHIELD better than almost anyone.

"That's not entirely true Natasha." Said a new voice, one that the demigod didn't recognize. But judging from the hopeful look that had made its way onto his companions face, she did. But her look of hope disappeared soon after, as suspicion made its way into her thoughts.

With Fury acting the way he was, why couldn't his right hand woman do the same?

"Maria, what are you doing here?" she said in a passive voice as she turned to face her one time friend.

Seeing her look, the dark haired woman looked taken aback, but this look of surprise turned to one of understanding, and finally ended in sympathy.

"Look Natasha, I'll get straight to the point. We need to get you and Jackson out of here as soon as possible. I'm positive that you've already noticed that the director is not the same. He seems hell-bent on finding some sort of corruption, and you so happen to be the easy choice." The woman who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere spoke in a hurried voice, not bothering to hide her apprehension.

"While you're mostly right, the United States just revoked SHIELD's access to their resources. In fact, they banned the entire organization from their country."

"What!?" A surprised Natasha interrupted.

"With the events of the invasion of New York, the corruption within the agency, and their failures of late, the United States government had labeled SHIELD as a terrorist agency." At this point, both Percy and Natasha were sitting with rapt attention at the new information.

"Look, I would never do anything like this, but I've know you for a long time Natasha, and I don't want to see this end with your death. I… since I began here in SHIELD I have had a secret." Moving forward, she lowered her voice so it would be impossible for anyone to hear what was being said.

"I… I work for the CIA…" Her confession drew startled looks from the cell mates. Throwing another worried took over her shoulder, Maria continued. "And I know what you are, Perseus."

Fury stood over the slumped form of one of the deck hands on the flight deck. The man in question was a member of a flight crew who had sent a message to his supposed wife a few hours earlier. The whole situation was against SHIELD regulations, and rightly so.

If anyone associated with their group was able to send unmonitored messages, it could be a major breech in their security. After finding out, the director had dragged the man out to a secluded part of the upper deck for questioning.

With another kick to the man's side, fury sent his subordinate rolling across the floor, coming to a stop inches from the edge.

"I will ask again what agency you sent information to." Fury's voice had that same edge to it as it did when he ordered Natasha to be brought to him.

"I told you director it was to my wife… before we left she went into labor and I was worried. With our last kid she had so many complications, I was afraid that something had happened, and with us being gone for more than a month, I just couldn't stand not knowing!" The man was crying, but it was hard to see. The wind that wiped across the deck biting deep, dragging away any tears that he had.

"Yes your wife, wasn't she born a North Korean citizen?" A manic smile was now spread across his face. Looking from an out-sider's point of view, it was clear he was enjoying himself.

"Y-yes, but she was just born in North Korea, she moved out of the country by the time she was three." He tried to explain.

"It doesn't matter, agent," Fury, without warning, sent another kick towards the man, but this time it was aimed at his unprotected face. The force of it didn't just shatter the man's nose, it sent him over the edge and into thousands of feet of open air.

"Any breach in protocol is grounds for termination." The one-eyed man stated to himself.

For several minutes, Fury stood there watching the man fall to his death, that same smile still present. Once the man had disappeared from sight, he turned towards the entrance. It was time for an in person meeting with Perseus Jackson.

But this time, he was going to get some information from him.

"The government has had dealings with your family for a long time." If her revelation about being a spy for the CIA was surprising, then her knowledge about the Greek world was like knowing a toddler could do algebra. Looking nervously at Percy, Natasha waited for his response. She was expecting anger, or distrust, but not what he did next.

For a few seconds he was silent, but then an almost hysterical laugh ripped loose from his throat. "I knew it," he sounded like a man whose theory had finally been accepted by his peers, "I thought something like that had happened, how else I would be able to blow up national monuments and schools and not at some point be arrested?"

For the most part, Natasha was amused by the man's reaction. Although she had seen his memories, she had never been able to listen to his thoughts during those memories. Yes, she had seen his life from beginning to end, and he had done the same with her, so she had a very good idea on how he would react to and handle different situations, but in this instance, she released she still had a lot to learn about the man.

"Look," the CIA spy interrupted, "I contacted my supervisors as soon as I knew who you were, and asked them for some help. Once we have everything set up, they will probably send in a team get us out. They don't want any asset like you in the hands of an unstable man like Fury. It would be like handing a suicidal man a nuclear warhead.

"Because of that, it shouldn't be more than a few days for them to gather all of their resources and locate the ship. Until then, I need you two to keep as much information secret as possible. At this point, Fury knowing about the Greek world could be disastrous.

But before they could answer she interrupted them once again.

"Look, I have to go right now, I don't know how much Fury would like me interacting with you two, and I don't really want to know. I will, if possible, try to contact you when I'm told about the rescue mission, but until then I have to do everything in my power to make it seem as if I have never talked to you."

After getting their promises, Maria ran from the room, making sure that no agents were in sight.

It wasn't until after Maria had left that Natasha realized that she had spent the entire conversation with Percy's arm wrapped around her shoulders.

Not noticing the compromising position they had been in the entire time.

NEW CHAPTER YAY! AND FAR AHEAD OF SCHEDULE! YOU CAN THANK ALL OF THE REVIEWERS FOR THAT.

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Until next time. This is your favorite crossover author singing out.


	7. Chapter 7

After Hill left, Natasha immediately moved away from Percy, embarrassed that they had sat through the entire conversation with their arms wrapped around each other. Not only did it send a faint blush to her cheeks, something she hated, but it was also dangerous.

If Fury had walked in when they had been in that position, then who knows what he would have thought. But then, why should she care? If everything went as planned, they would be gone soon anyway…

Of course, Fury could do a lot of damage in the time it took the US to send in a team to rescue them. If the rescue team even made it, that is. The hellicarrier wasn't defenseless; it had more weapons on board then most third-world countries even had access to.

The US government would have to have something special up their sleeves if they think that they could take on SHIELD's mobile command post without taking too many losses. But then, maybe they weren't planning on doing things quietly.

If they knew Percy's secret, they could just blow the entire ship to Kingdome come with a nuclear bomb, and not have to worry about the demigod going insane.

It was a sobering thought; they were certainly capable of doing something like that. Just the year before, they had put out a public announcement to the UN and all other countries. The president had come out on TV and announced across all news networks they had control of that the US government as a whole would no longer put up with terrorists, drug cartels, and different international crime organizations.

It had been a historic day, many had applauded the idea, and the president even got a standing ovation by the UN. Most people though, thought that it was just talk; maybe there would be some new laws, but things would keep going on as they always had. Whatever doubts the world had were destroyed the next day.

In the first twenty-four hours after the announcement, more than seven thousand criminals had died. It had been sobering. Every major criminal, from the heads of the drug cartels in Mexico and South America, to the international human smuggling rings in Europe, were decimated. The US had, in an unprecedented show of force, destroyed every major criminal organization on the planet.

The only thing that stopped a world war from breaking out in the after math of nine eleven, the day the world woke up to find the scum of the earth dead, was the simple fact that every person killed was a major player with clear and legally recognized connections that had led to the death of their fellow man.

Then there was also the question of where the agents that had killed these men had gone. Not one of the criminals that had been killed died in some drone attack- every single one of them had died from a variety of high caliber rifles.

Not one US soldier had been found, hell, not even a single shell casing had been found, it was as if they had disappeared off the planet when they had completed their mission. This lack of evidence terrified the international community, if the United States had the capability to break into the world's most secure buildings to kill all of these people, then what was to say that they wouldn't do the same to any government official that stood in their way?

It had been an intense week; some news casters were even calling it the Cubin missile crisis of the twenty-first century. Although it had done a lot of good, it was still highly contested.

If they had almost started a world war over some criminals, then what would they do with a single individual that could annihilate the entire world? Even now Natasha sent a worried look around the room, if they wanted to, they could have Perseus killed, and not have to worry about the threat he poses. The more she thought about it, the worse her headache got.

The only way things could get worse, was if some race of aliens came down and declared war on the human race. Wait… that already happened. She must have been sitting on the cot for a while, because Percy literally fell into her lap in boredom.

His head was a comfortable weight on her legs. "That's enough Nat, worrying about it isn't going to help." At first she gave him a soft smile, she knew that at this point she couldn't do anything, she just needed to trust Maria.

"Wait a minute," she said, her face now taking on a sadistic look, "Did you just call me Nat?"

"Maybe…" the demigod whispered, looking sheepish. His eyes darted around their cell for something to put in-between him and that creepy smile.

Not finding anything, he did the next best thing, and put as much room between him and what could only be described as a smile out of Freddy Kruger's nightmares. "Look, I know you don't like being called that," he started, holding up his arms as if to show he didn't have any weapons, "But i-Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Half way through his apology, the Russian had jumped up from the bed where he had left her, and started to run full tilt at him. It was terrifying; with her red hair flared out behind her, she looked like an avenging angel ready to smite some sinners.

Running away from her, Percy had to admit that him being the illegitimate child of a pagan deity, he was more than likely to run into some kind of thing like that eventually. Soon, the demigod son of Poseidon was talking to himself.

"I mean, for almost all of the last two thousand years, just being a demigod made me eligible for witch burnings and public executions." What Percy didn't know, was that his ADHD thoughts had distracted him from what was important, that being the mad woman who, up until a few seconds ago, had been hot on his heels.

After five laps around the cell, she had stopped, and was now waiting for him to come full circle instead of chasing after him. As soon as he saw her standing in front of him, feet planted and spread wide with her hands on her hips, he had to shake his head to get the thoughts that bubbled up at the image of her like that out of his head.

He knew he was dead; he wasn't going to be able to stop in time. If he tried, they would just end up on the ground, where her years of hand to hand combat would come into play. So the dead man walking, or, in Percy's case, running, did the only thing he could think of.

With one last burst of speed, he dove for it. Flying in between her legs, he started to pray to whatever god or goddess was looking over him just then, hoping that he would make it through this alive and with most of his skin still attached to his body. He never made it three feet.

As soon as his eyes darted to the space in-between Natasha legs, she knew what he was going to do. With her sadistic smile back on her face, she waited until he was just passing under her, just as he had some glimmer of hope, and dropped with all of her weight on his back.

This caused the demigod to let out a grunt as some of the air was forced from his lungs. What happened next, Percy didn't know, but one second he was on his stomach with a mad woman on his back, and the next, he was on his back with her crouched over him, one small foot on each of his wrists, trapping him and making it so he was immobile.

For several seconds they stared at each other, Natasha's crimson hair acting like a curtain around both of their faces, hiding them from the view any camera would have. "I told you not to call me that Jackson."

Percy looked at her for several seconds and swallowed several times while trying to come up with a retort. "I-i…"

"You what? You apologize." The longer they stayed in the position they were in, the harder it was for Percy to think. Yes, he had a very upset woman above him, but… She had to be the most attractive one he had ever seen, and he hadn't decided whether he liked the position they had ended up in. Yes, he was trapped, but he was trapped under Natasha.

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?" She said with a growl.

It was the growl that did it. He didn't know what he was doing, but the next thing he knew, their positions where reversed and his lips where pressed hard against hers. It was hard to tell who was more surprised, the super spy who just sat their wide-eyed, or the unstable demigod who had initiated the impromptu make out session.

Percy didn't know what had happened, it was almost like he had blacked out for a second and then he was lying on top of her. As soon as he realized what he was doing, he threw himself off of her with a speed that wasn't possible, even for people like Captain Rogers. He was almost a blur he had moved so fast, and when he hit the far wall, it cracked.

It wasn't a big crack, but the material, whatever it was, could stand up to almost all physical attacks. The Hulk probably couldn't even break out. Even Thor wouldn't have done anything without his armor. But the demigod did, and he wasn't even trying to.

But Percy was the only one to notice. Natasha hadn't moved from her spot on the floor where he had left her. Slowly, he moved away from the wall, back towards his mortal anchor. Eventually, he was able to see her face. It was almost as red as her hair, and her eyes were as wide as humanly possible, and were focused on nothing.

She just kept looking off into space. She looked like she was in shock, but it seemed after several seconds that she snapped out of it, and almost on command the red faded until the only sign of her embarrassment was a light pink on her cheeks.

The glare that had sent Percy running before was back. Even though he would never admit it to her face, she didn't look very threatening. In fact, she looked almost like a small child who was about to throw a temper tantrum.

Thankfully, she didn't manage to get to him before the door to the outside room slammed open. Percy wasn't able to figure out how Fury managed to slam an automatic door, but the director of SHIELD still managed to do it, even if it went against the laws of common sense.

As soon as she saw Fury, Natasha was up and in a defensive position in-between Percy and her boss. Slightly behind him and off to each side, were several large and somewhat intimidating agents. Without saying a word, the two men moved forward toward the red-head who, at this point, had lost her earlier blush. One of the men reached out to grab her, but she wasn't there. She darted under one of his catcher's mitt sized hands, and sent a powerful knee into his groin.

In any other situation, that kind of attack should have sent any man to the ground, but the man didn't fall. He didn't even flinch. He just reached down and grabbed a fistful of her hair and began dragging her out of the room.

Seeing this, Percy made a lunge to stop the man, but the second agent brought out what looked like a smart phone, but what, seconds later, turned out to be a high powered Taser, and Percy was sent to the ground under the strong electrical current that ran through the almost invisible wires.

What neither Natasha nor Percy had seen, was the skin tight body armor that each of the agents wore, armor that could withstand a baseball bat swung by a major league player. If Percy had been able to reach one of the men, he could have done some damage, but it was better that he didn't. But that didn't mean the twitching demigod liked being tased.

While he lay their under the influence of thousands of volts electricity, Natasha was taken from the room to who-knows-where. The man holding the small black box that was the cause of Percy's current predicament gave it to the director while he attached metal restraints to his wrist and ankles. By the time he was done, Percy was sure that he looked like some failed magician who couldn't get out of his own trick.

His hands had been bound together and were now pulled behind his back, and his feet were almost pulled past his waist. All in all, it wasn't the most comfortable position he had ever been in. Slowly, the electric charge started to dissipate as the battery gave out.

Seconds later, the door closed again, leaving him alone with Fury, who just stared at him. It was kind of creepy, even with one eye his glare almost made the demigod squirm. His first impressions of the man were not the best. You could even say the once carefree son of Poseidon absolutely hated the man.

Just judging by his actions yesterday with Natasha's interrogation, he felt like tearing the cyclops in half. That dark anger he had felt for most of his life had come back. It was bad, he started to shake, and almost made a lunge for Fury, but before he could, something stopped him.

Suddenly, his vision cut out, leaving him only in a black that was so complete it felt as if it was swallowing up his very person. The longer he stayed, the more anger and hate he felt, and then he started to fall…

But then everything stopped again, but this time there was a break, and Natasha was there standing over him with an out-stretched hand. She didn't look like she normally did; usually she was in some form of pants or work out cloths, now she was in a simple, white, knee-length dress.

It was simple, modest, and made her look like the person he had seen through her memories. With that smile on her face that made her look like she was about to break out laughing, she looked like she should.

She was free, free of stress, free of her work with SHIELD. Slowly, a new feeling broke through the hate. Slowly, the dark faded away and Percy found himself lying on the ground again with Fury standing over him. The anger was gone now, he was at peace, no matter what Fury did, he would be fine. He wouldn't break because he had something to live for now.

Even though it had felt like hours floating around in that haze, it could have only been a couple seconds before he gained control, if it hadn't, Fury would have been suspicious. Well, more suspicious then he normally was.

Stepping forward, Fury didn't waste any time. With a well-aimed kick, Percy was sent rolling across the plain floor. He had expected some questions, and lots of yelling, but Fury must have had a bad day, because he didn't stop his kicking until Percy was pressed up against the wall of the cell. Crouching down, the man leaned over him, maybe he was trying to intimidate him?

It didn't work. "I'll only ask you three times, each time you don't answer, things get worse, and if you don't answer for the third time… well, you may not survive the experience." The way he said it made it sound like it was a completely rational request.

"Number one: who was behind the storm?" The way he talked completely contradicted his earlier attack on the demigod, it was polite and not at all like his vicious kicking that almost had an animalistic tinge to it. He was reverting to something more violent and feral, something that liked violence. Slowly, the dark haired son of Poseidon sat up, wincing at his injuries.

The surgical cuts he had suffered yesterday that were almost forgotten with his waking up next to Natasha were now back at the forefront of his mind. As a demigod, Percy and an extremely high pain threshold, and was able to block out some serious injuries, but it was hard to do that when you were someone's personal kickball.

Percy was so engrossed in his own thoughts, he didn't even realize that Fury had asked him a question until one of Fury's fists rocketed into his face and banged his head against the wall. He didn't stop there; soon a rain of well-aimed punches came down on his shoulders, face and neck. Soon Percy's demigod skin couldn't hold under the pressure and started to split and bruise under the heavy handed blows.

At this point, Fury was putting all of his weight behind each hit, and it certainly showed on Percy's upper body. By the time the first round of beatings had finished, the wall behind them was no longer see thru, instead it was an opaque pink. But the demigod didn't make a sound, Percy and sat through the entire thing without any expression of pain slipping through his carefully crafted mask.

Standing up out of breath, Fury sent a dirty look at the demigod at his feet. "Second question: who are you working for?" It was a reasonable question in Fury's mind, but to Percy it was completely ridiculous. Now most people in Percy's position would have stayed quiet, denied the allegations, or even admitted to whatever their torturer was accusing them of. Percy did none of these; he instead decided to insult Fury.

"I'm working for your mother." In retrospect, Percy thought, as a new round of beatings took place, what he said probably wasn't the smartest thing to say. After a few seconds, or maybe minutes, Fury pulled back, only to reach into his coat and pull out two objects.

The first wasn't very threatening at first, Percy actually thought it was a screw driver because they looked almost identical. It had a long black metal shaft that came from an insulated handle, the tip then widened and flattened into a blunt point.

The second object was much more sinister. In Fury's other hand was a small gas torch. With a click, a hissing blue flame sprouted from its tip. Without a care in the world, Fury brought the blue flames towards the screwdriver and started to heat it up. A chill went down his back, the black color along the length of the metal wasn't paint or the type of metal, it was burn marks from who knows how many other people that where in his position.

Once the metal had heated up to a bright cheery red glow, Fury brought it down towards Percy's unprotected face, not bothering to hide his gleeful expression. He was enjoying himself. Slowly, he brought down the hot metal on one of Percy's worse cuts.

As soon as it touched, the sizzle of burnt blood immediately started to cool the metal. But something else happened as Fury was bringing his torture implement closer, Percy had closed his eyes. When the metal touched his skin, that black void took over again.

He could feel his powers trying to take control and shield him from the injury. It was then that he made the connection, while he could ignore the pain with the natural abilities given to him by his blood line, he couldn't use any of the magical abilities.

The powers given to him by his father like his water powers, and his ability to resist heat, were now beyond him. With every potential use of this power he could lose control.

Without Natasha, he realized, he would have already destroyed the world. The black void was the corruption in his body, the hate and anger his father told Natasha about, and it seemed like it was only triggered by his use of his godly power.

But then what was the incident that had happened earlier, how had he managed to break the glass just by throwing his body against it? Somehow he had used his godly power, but not felt any of its side effects.

Beside his little incident earlier, his kiss… with the incident just a little while ago he had blacked out for what felt like a few seconds. It scared him that he couldn't control himself. If that happened again and he used his powers, he could lose control. It was a sobering thought. He needed to work on his control. If he reached for his power instinctually, something that happened in dangerous situations, it wouldn't turn out well.

Once again, his black and disturbing mindscape was broken by Natasha in her white dress, but instead of the smiling face that she had last time, she had an almost timid smile with a light blush that spread across her cheeks. Slowly, she reached down with one hand and grabbed his hand and for the first time spoke,

"Come on Percy, you don't want to keep me waiting." Opening his eyes, he felt Fury pull away, leaving behind blackened flesh. It didn't hurt, but that was mostly because the burnt skin could no longer feel anything. Just by the number of areas of skin that didn't hurt, Percy could tell that Fury had most likely cauterized all of the cuts on his face.

Fury was surprised at his prisoner's lack of reaction, not once had he flinched during the whole ordeal. Maybe he would really start to enjoy himself, it was plain to see that he could take a lot of punishment, but not even reacting to the burns was something the director didn't expect.

Stepping back, Fury placed the torch and now cold screw driver back into his coat, but let it close so the demigod lying in front of him couldn't see what his hands where doing.

"Last question Jackson, who in my agency, is a spy." For a last question, it wasn't what Percy was expecting, but he did know the answer to it. In his surprise, he must have let something slip, because Fury was immediately in his face, the man's hands filled with fist-fulls of Percy's shirt.

"Who is it Jackson?!" he yelled, slamming him against the wall. When Percy didn't answer him, Fury turned and threw the demigod back towards the middle of the room. When Percy only went a third of the way there, Fury kicked him the rest of the way.

Only this time the kicks had a lot more power in them. One kick was so hard that Percy felt his ribs shift out of the way, each one braking under the assault. Even after he reached the center of the room, Fury sent several more kicks into his side. By the time he stopped, Percy's side had caved in and was no longer recognizable.

It was bad, Percy was lucky none of his bones had broken off into anything important. Slowly, as if to add some sort of dramatic effect, Fury pulled out a knife. It wasn't a normal strait edged knife, this one had a feature most didn't.

Curving from its tip along the back was a sharpened hook. The hook was normally meant to help hunters skin their kills, it was meant to puncture the thick hide of larger game animals, and then hook underneath, making it easy to cut a slit in the skin without damaging any of the internal organs and ruin the meat.

As if to draw out the tension of the moment, Fury brought the knife down and cut his shirt away from Percy's body. He then made several small cuts, tracing the broken ribs beneath the skin, adding another level to the pain.

"You know Jackson, I think I'm going to enjoy this." With a sick smile, Fury pushed the point of the hook through the skin just inside of Percy's hip until it had disappeared into the skin and muscle of his lower stomach.

Slowly, the director started to pull the knife across down below his navel and to the other hip, all of the while he made jagged lines, making the cuts as uneven as he could, so instead of a strait and even line across Percy's abdomen, it was more of a wave.

But even as Fury cut his way across, he pressed the ruined remains of Percy's t-shirt to the wound so he wouldn't get blood on himself. To Percy, it was painful. Not as bad as holding up the sky, or the Styx, but it was worse than any other injury he had suffered through.

Once he was done, Fury pulled a small container from his jacket. Even with Percy just having been gutted, he had to laugh internally at how Fury had everything he needed inside the black leather. It was his utility belt where he kept all of his nifty little tools. Leaning over him, Fury started to unscrew the top to the container.

"So, Mr. Jackson, I will ask you, are you going to answer my questions?" Percy didn't say anything for a minute, thinking of how to reply to Fury's last question. He could have gone with something intelligent like, 'I told you I don't know anything' but decided on the more sarcastic response.

"That was four, Fury, and you said you would only ask me three." His response got another hit to the face. With a scowl on his face, Fury ripped away the t-shirt, the only thing keeping Percy's insides from becoming his outsides, and poured the contents of the container into the now-gaping wound.

The white substance that fell out turned out to be salt, but it must have been mixed with something else, because it didn't just burn, it also started to smoke, sending up nauseous fumes that clouded Percy's mind. The edges of his vision started to become blurry and…

They didn't do anything, that's what worried her. She had expected some form of torture, she didn't think that Fury would give up just yet. Then again, he wasn't doing anything like he normally did. The only thing the angry men had done was take her to another holding cell and watch her while her old boss did gods know what to Percy.

They only stayed in the room for a little over half of an hour before Fury walked in. During that time, Natasha had been beside herself with worry. Her experience the day before had been bad, and before this had all happened she had a working and positive relationship with the man. Who knows what he was capable of with Percy.

The heavy metal door slammed open, and a bloody-fisted Fury walked in. One of her guards didn't move fast enough, and was struck with the flying door, leaving him with a bloody face.

But Fury didn't care, he just moved further into the room until he stood in front of her. He didn't say anything, he didn't even make a move to touch her, all he did was drop a small box into her lap and walk away.

With shaking hands, Natasha opened the small tin box. It hadn't taken him long to return, could he have come back after killing Percy and was now giving her some sick souvenir? With the lid open, Natasha didn't know if the contents were better.

Lying in the rusted interior were a set of surgical stitching needles that looked like they had come out of the civil war, along with the needles was some thread that was meant to bind the wounds. Percy… He was in trouble. The guards moved forward and grabbed each arm.

They moved back towards their shared cell, but she didn't need any prompting, she didn't resist in any way. As soon as they entered through the doorway, Natasha new it was bad. The glass beside the door was covered in blood. It looked like some horrible murder scene from where she was standing, blood had spattered in long streaks along the glass.

If he had lost that much blood, then she needed to hurry. She didn't bother staying with the guards, she ran forward and strait through the still open door. Fury hadn't even bothered to close the door after he left, and when she saw Percy, she knew why. He was still restrained, lying on his side.

The blood and gray tubing had spilled out from the gaping hole in his stomach. He had been disemboweled, left to suffer with his limbs bound, without the ability to stem the flow of blood. Running forward, Natasha didn't hear the sound of the door shutting, all of her focus was on Percy.

With years of training, she dropped to the floor next to the dark haired man, careful not to touch any of the intestines that lay on the floor. She quickly checked the rest of his body for any other injuries, the ribs on one side looked bad, the entire side that he wasn't lying on was deformed.

Smashed in by the director's steel toed combat boots. While the injury could be life threatening, there was nothing she could do with her limited medical training. When she reached his face, she cried out, not being able to hold in her reactions any more.

From what she could see, the entire right side of his face was crisscrossed with deep, blackened burns. There was hardly a place that wasn't covered. Thankfully, the burns didn't extend to the other side, which, although spared from the burns, was still bad. His left side was still covered in newly formed and forming bruises and still bleeding cuts.

Leaning forward, she lightly held her hand to the cheek that wasn't burnt. Running through the young spy's head were the instructions of the field medical hand book.

First, she needed to find out if he was responsive, so with her hand still on his cheek, she leaned forward and talked into his ear, tears on the verge of falling. "P-Percy can you hear me? P-Percy..? Talk to me Percy, please."

Soon the tears started to fall, unable to keep them at bay any longer. He didn't answer. But he was still alive, his chest rose and fell, he was still breathing. So she got to work, moving down to the most threatening wound, she used all of her training.

First, she checked each loop carefully, making sure that none of them had any damage to them. If they did, they could bleed or leak internal fluids, which would cause a bad infection and be life threatening. Thankfully, none of them had any damage, so she moved onto the next step.

She had to get all of his insides back inside. She should have really washed her hands, but there was no way for her to do that, so she just had to go without. For the next five minutes, she carefully pressed the gray loops back inside the cavity from where they came.

It was gory, and by the time she had finished her arms and cloths where covered in her friend's life-blood. But with that part done, she could move on to something she was familiar with. Moving to the needle and thread Fury had given her, she got herself mentally prepared.

No matter how many times she did this, she could never shake the sick feeling she got at the feeling of the needle going through skin. But she pushed through and began stitching up Percy's stomach, careful not to let anything fall out. It took her a long time, but it was eventually done. She sat back, wiping the sweat from her face. Looking down at Percy, Natasha realized that they were both lying in a lot of gore. It was enough to remind her of old slasher films.

It shouldn't have been possible for a normal human to lose so much blood, but then again, Percy was anything but normal. Moving around Percy, Natasha pulled him out of the mess and onto a clean section of floor.

Standing next to Percy ten minutes later, Natasha let out a shaky breath. Percy was stable, but not out of the woods yet. If they didn't get out of here soon, then she wasn't sure that either of them would survive.

Looking back at the demigod, Natasha didn't realize she was talking out loud, "Why Percy, why did you do that earlier?" Without warning, the entire aircraft career shook as explosions ripped through the outer walls. The Americans had come.

OK THERE IS YOUR NEW CHAPTER AND IT'S THE LONGEST ONE YET. AS ALWAYS DON'T FORGET TO REVIEW EVEN IF YOU'VE ALREADY DONE IT BEFORE.

ALSO I REWROTE MY PERCY JACKSON BLACK LAGOON CROSSOVER SO IT'S NOW OVER 5K LONG! ITS ALSO NOW HAS A PERCY REVY PAIRING!

I ALSO PUBLISHED A NEW STORY CALLED A GOD FOUND IT'S A PERCY JACKSON TOMB RAIDER CROSSOVER WITH A PERCY LARA PAIRING HOPE YOU LIKE IT.

FINALY I HAVE SEVERAL OTHER CROSSOVERS I'M WORKING ON RIGHT NOW AND AM PLANNING ON PUBLISHING A CHAPTER FOR A NEW BEGINNING NEXT. THE REASON FOR WHY IT TOOK ME SO LONG… IS BECAUSE IN THE LAST TWO WEEKS I HAVE WRITEN MORE THEN 20K WORTH OF FANFICTIONS. UNTIL NEXT TIME.

PS I ALMOST FORGOT GO READ MY OTHER STORYS AND LEVE A REVIEW IM ALLWAYS LOOKING TO IMPROVE MY WRITING AND REVIEWS HELP SO MUCH.

PSS HOW AM I DOING ON THE ROMANCE? WHAT COULD I IMPROVE ON?


	8. Chapter 8

p class="MsoNormal"I am upset about the reaction to the last chapter with so few reviews and other reactions like favorites and fallows I decided that I will be re working this story to something even better than before. In the meantime please check out my other stories. if you already have and are having a hard time finding anything to read like I am go check out "A Demigod in a Land of Monsters" it just updated a few days ago and is one of my favorite stories. Until next time./p 


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